The manager of producer services with Sask Pork says transportation biosecurity remains the primary focus as Saskatchewan’s pork producers strive to keep Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus out of their province.
On Monday the Office of Manitoba’s Chief Veterinary Officer reported Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus was found at a high traffic site in western Manitoba, bringing the number of environmental findings in the province to eight, including two incidents where pigs are believed to have become infected in the high traffic site.
Harvey Wagner, the manager of producer services with the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board, says this latest development certainly makes everyone aware that they have to maintain high levels of biosecurity during transport.
I think it’s one of those things you have to almost assume that any place where animals congregate or trucks congregate that the potential for PED to be there increases quite a bit so we have to be sure that we are paying attention to every transport and making sure that we do a proper sanitation and wash.
We don’t have as many sites where we have significant number of concentrations but we are monitoring the sites we have.
We’re certainly monitoring our federal packing plant, we’re monitoring the deadstock rendering location and we’re also monitoring a couple smaller assembly yards so keeping an eye on it and that’s being done by the Government of Saskatchewan, the Ministry of Agriculture..
So far we’ve had no positive samplings there.
It’s good to see that we haven’t had any but certainly we’ll still make sure that we have to pay attention to those sites, those locations because any time you’re bringing together trucks coming from different locations and different directions, always have the opportunity to bring the virus in.
Wagner says farms have tightened up on farm biosecurity paying attention to barn entries, how they handle loadouts and trucks coming onto their farms and most are paying for considerably improved washing making sure tricks coming onto their farms are cleaner.
