By Bruce Cochrane.
Manitoba Pork is encouraging pork producers and their service providers to step up their attention to biosecurity in the wake of the latest confirmed case of PED.
Last week Manitoba's Chief Veterinary Officer confirmed the province's 15th case of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea and the 5th in the series of outbreaks that began at the end of April, this one in a sow operation in the same area as the four previously confirmed farms.
Mark Fynn, the Manager of Quality Assurance and Animal Care Programs with Manitoba Pork, says the source of infection has been difficult to identify raising the importance of heightened biosecurity.
Mark Fynn-Manitoba Pork:
We don't have any smoking gun at any one of the operations.
We have some indicators, like I know maybe the first farm, we have some thought that maybe it was a transport related incident but yet we don't have any firm proof on that side of things.
The other sites that we have, we don't have a strong connection between farms either.
There's no real good link between farms as to how this is moving around other than the fact that they're in close proximity to one another.
That starts us asking things like, do we have to be worried about aerosolization potentially if there's strong winds or is it probably more likely to moved around regionally whether it be on roads and that sort of thing.
So we're really encouraging those people that are part of the industry, including service providers to really limit their movements within that area because we don't have a really good answer for how the thing's moving around and so the more that we can restrict movement through those areas the more likely we are able to contain this outbreak that's happening there.
There will be an end to the outbreak but we need everyone to take it really seriously and implement as biosecurity as possible and try and limit the amount of movement in this region.
Fynn acknowledges this recent flare up has been disheartening but, he notes, the province's track record has shown it is possible to contain the infection so there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Source: Farmscape