Manitoba has first case of PED in 2024

Dec 09, 2024
By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content, Farms.com

A finisher barn in the province’s southeast is infected

Manitoba’s pork industry has its first case of porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) in 2024.

As of Dec. 4, a finisher barn in the province’s southeast is infected with the disease, Manitoba Agriculture’s website says.

For comparison, Manitoba had two cases of PED in all of 2023, and nearly 100 cases across the province in 2022.

In 2023, Manitoba Pork, the provincial government and other stakeholders developed a PED elimination plan after a string of outbreaks in 2021.

This plan aims to eliminate 96 per cent of PED infections in the province by 2027.

The recent lower instances of infection show the plan is working, but there’s more that can be done, said Jenelle Hamblin, director of swint health with Manitoba Pork.

“It's very much intentionally meant to be evergreen and reflective to our current disease pressures, our current production standards, biosecurity levels and risk that we have for the sector,” she told Farmscape. “It's very much a continual process and it's intended and it was designed to be that way.”

Canada had its first case of PED in January 2014 on an Ontario farm.

Since then, PED has also been reported in Albera, Quebec, and P.E.I.

Work on PED vaccine is underway.

In 2016, for example, the University of Saskatchewan announced the development and testing of a prototype vaccine to protect swine herds.

And in June of 2024, Canadian biopharmaceutical company PlantForm Corporation announced funding from the Canadian Swine Research and Development Cluster to develop an oral vaccine for pigs to protect against PED.

Video: Swine Industry Advances: Biodigesters Lower Emissions and Increase Profits

Analysis of greenhouse gas (GHG emissions) in the Canadian swine sector found that CH4 emissions from manure were the largest contributor to the overall emissions, followed by emissions from energy use and crop production.

This innovative project, "Improving Swine Manure-Digestate Management Practices Towards Carbon Neutrality With Net Zero Emission Concepts," from Dr. Rajinikanth Rajagopal, under Swine Cluster 4, seeks to develop strategies to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

While the management of manure can be very demanding and expensive for swine operations, it can also be viewed as an opportunity for GHG mitigation, as manure storage is an emission source built and managed by swine producers. Moreover, the majority of CH4 emissions from manure occur during a short period of time in the summer, which can potentially be mitigated with targeted intervention.

In tandem with understanding baseline emissions, Dr. Rajagopal's work focuses on evaluating emission mitigation options. Manure additives have the potential of reducing manure methane emissions. Additives can be deployed relatively quickly, enabling near-term emission reductions while biodigesters are being built. Furthermore, additives can be a long-term solution at farms where biogas is not feasible (e.g., when it’s too far from a central digester). Similarly, after biodigestion, additives can also be used to further reduce emissions from storage to minimize the carbon intensity of the bioenergy.