By Bruce Cochrane.
Alberta Pork says last week's PED positive environmental sample collected from a swine transport trailer demonstrates the value of programs designed to safeguard Alberta swine herds from the virus.
Last week, as part of its regular surveillance at high traffic swine facilities and truck washes, Alberta Agriculture detected PED virus in an environmental sample collected from a livestock trailer that had transported swine from Manitoba to Wisconsin and had been washed at a Wisconsin truck wash facility.
Javier Bahamon, the Quality Assurance Coordinator with Alberta Pork, says the identification of the contamination demonstrates the effectiveness of the surveillance program and reinforces the importance of continued attention to biosecurity.
Javier Bahamon-Alberta Pork:
PED is close by.
It is in our neighbors, our biggest neighbors, partners in business and we need to be vigilant on what we do and how we do, saying that we need to keep our biosecurity standards up and, even though it's summertime, it can happen anytime soon when we know that it is endemic in the States.
The producers have been very receptive for all those programs and our industry partners as well.
That's why the surveillance is working properly and we are pleased for that with all of them and we thank all of them for this.
We keep having programs, such as the biocontainment assessments.
Those programs are directly with growing forward money that we developed for all of the producers across Alberta and the steps going on for keeping our herd health status high is what we are trying to achieve with all these programs and money put in front of producers.
These are very good programs that we have and they have been very receptive to it.
Bahamon says the message remains unchanged.
He says we need to keep our guard up at all times against PED and other diseases that can affect our production.
Source: Farmscape