The manager of the Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network remains hopeful PED can be eliminated from the Canadian swine herd.
Last week one new case of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea was confirmed on a farrow to finish farm in Perth County, Ontario, the first case in Canada in just over a month.
Dr. Chris Byra, the manager of the Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network says, despite this one new case, we are doing a better job in terms of biosecurity and the situation in Canada in general has remained stable.
The virus is less viable during the summer but obviously with new cases still occurring, in the right levels of moisture and so on it can still survive but this is the opportunity that we have to begin the elimination programs that are underway in Ontario.
The hope is then to have the majority of the herds free of the virus or well on the way to being free of the virus by late October.
In the winter this organism is more active and certainly can survive much longer in the environment so that’s when we tend to start seeing more cases of it.
I think it’s encouraging that we have a plan and Ontario, I think, is showing that their plan has been implemented, farmers are backing it and being supportive of it and there’s obviously some optimism amongst the industry to that think they can get rid of it so I guess time will tell us what the results are.
Dr. Byra notes Quebec receives approximately 15 thousand pigs a week from Ontario and so far has had only one case of PED on farm and American systems have been able to eliminate the virus in almost all cases.
He acknowledges the probability of eradicating the virus in the U.S. is low because there is so much contamination but in Canada producers have been doing a good job preventing new infections so there is a chance the virus can be eradicated.
