By Bruce Cochrane.
The Manager of Swine Health Ontario credits a program where pork producers share their farm's swine health information with helping dramatically reduce the number of farms infected by Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea.
About six years ago the Ontario pork industry established an Area Regional Control and Elimination Program to address PRRS and that program was expanded in 2014 to PED and associated Deltacoronaviruses.
Lori Moser, the Manager of Swine Health Ontario, since the beginning of 2014, the number of primary sites in Ontario infected with PED has fallen from 103 to fewer than eight.
Lori Moser-Swine Health Ontario:
We ask our participants to be transparent about disease status.
It's sharing information between producers so they can work together and also sharing information with their acting veterinarians so we can all work and understand where disease is, work together to help control risks.
It has resulted in good outcomes like electing to change movement of pigs.
When we had a positive site, if we were going to move pigs to a site close to a negative site, that would be a great risk to that negative site.
Sometimes we can negotiate a change in where those pigs are placed.
It allows for decisions on educating your staff when you know there's a biosecurity risk, information on sharing status with our service providers so they can also make decisions to help reduce risk of transmitting disease.
We really ask producers to be very transparent between people who are participating in the program.
Our feeling is that we're a relatively small industry in reality and it's often true that people know anyway.
Then everyone has proper facts and can work together to help reduce risk.
Moser says producers have been every supportive.
She estimates 60 percent of all pig sites in Ontario are enrolled in the ARC and E.
Source: Farmscape