The chair of Manitoba Pork credits the aberrance of the province’s pork producers to strict biosecurity for the success in containing the spread of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea.
A panel discussion on Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea will be among the highlights of the 2014 Manitoba Pork Council annual general meeting underway today in Winnipeg.
Manitoba Pork chair Karl Kynoch says the province’s pork producers have been very successful to date in containing this virus to one site in Manitoba thanks in part to lessons learned through discussions with producers in the U.S. and Ontario who have dealt with the virus.
Basically we’re working with veterinarians, with the chief veterinary office as well and trying to educate ourselves on what do we need to do to try to clean this province up and keep it at a minimum in this province.
The biggest thing to keeping this out of the farms has been biosecurity.
We just keep preaching that biosecurity.
You have to take charge of the biosecurity on your farm.
You’ve got to know where the trucks have come from, you’ve got to know if those trucks have been washed that are coming onto your farm.
If you have parcel deliveries, semen delivery, all the vehicles coming onto your site.
You have to create that line of defence and you have to know where they’ve come from and you’ve got to create the line of defence on how you’re bringing the products onto your farm.
That might just mean creating different zones, your barn being one zone, a certain distance from the barn another zone and then you’ve got the rest of the province but you’ve got to create the line of where do people not cross over and how do you transfer the products over and how do you make sure it’s clean.
Our producers in Manitoba have been doing that very well and the fact we’ve managed to contain this to one site just proves that the producers of the province have been paying very close attention to their biosecurity.
Kynoch says the choice in Manitoba is to eliminate PED from the province.
For more on Manitoba Pork’s annual general meeting or on PED visit ManitobaPork.com.
