In the wake of Manitoba’s second confirmed on-farm case of PED Manitoba Pork is encouraging pork producers to maintain their focus on biosecurity.
Last week the Office of Manitoba’s Chief Veterinary Officer confirmed the province’s second on-farm case of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, identified through an investigation related to a previously reported positive sample from a high-traffic site.
Animals on the farm have shown no symptoms but steps are being taken to determine how the virus arrived on the farm and whether pigs were infected and identify other premises that have been in contact with the infected farm.
Manitoba Pork Chair Karl Kynoch observes stepped up biosecurity has been paying off.
We’ve actually seen in the U.S. where some of the farms that do have very good biosecurity, even though they’re in areas that have a lot of PED around, have managed to stay clean so we’ve been trying to promote that here in Manitoba.
In fact I’ve always believed that Manitoba is kind of the leader on biosecurity on what we’ve leaned over the past.
As we’ve seen we’ve managed to contain it to eight high traffic areas and still to date even though we have those high traffic areas we’ve only had two farms actually get it on the farm so that’s very encouraging, a very positive sign.
The other thing is we’ve been managing to work toward cleaning up some of the high traffic areas and we’re still waiting to see if they come back testing negative so there is definitely some hope here that you can clean it off your farm and move forward with very healthy stock.
But a lot of the producers are going to the lengths of every load of pigs that goes out, they’re washing those trucks, they’re disinfecting them before they come back on the yards.
Some people are transferring feed off yards.
They’re just making sure that all of the traffic coming on and off their yards is clean, they know where it’s been and they know that it’s been cleaned and disinfected.
Kynoch notes sunny dry weather and warmer temperatures will help reduce the spread of PED and give producers a better chance to wash and dry the trailers before loading pigs.
