A Veterinary Epidemiologist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development is encouraging pork producers to treat all high hog traffic sites they visit as being PED positive.
As part of Alberta’s Environmental Surveillance Project regular weekly environmental surveillance is being conducted at two truck washes, three slaughter plants and three assembly yards across the province.
Dr. Julia Keenliside, a Veterinary Epidemiologist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development, told those participating in an Alberta Pork PED telephone town hall Friday over five thousand samples have been collected since January.
In the last month we’ve had one more swine delta coronvirus positive and it was at one site in an outdoor loading chute and the chute was cleaned as best as possible but in this weather it’s getting harder and harder for people to clean so we do remind people that any of these high risk or high hog traffic sites could be positive at any time.
The site has subsequently tested negative so we still assume that all of our sites are negative for now but we do remind people that any time, even in between these negative tests, there could be potential contamination from trucks coming in from other provinces.
The purpose of our surveillance project is to look at the prevalence of these viruses and also for early warning.
It helps us to know where the virus is moving in western Canada and in Alberta and what more precautions we have to take.
We’ve had no more suspect cases which has been great and we’ve had no PED or TGE positive cases or environmental samples so I would like to give a big congratulations to the entire industry for a job really well done at keeping this virus out of Alberta so far.
Dr. Keenliside stresses people should consider all of these high risk high hog traffic sites as positive when the go there to drop off pigs, pick up pigs or have their trucks washed and take the appropriate biosecurity precautions.
