The province’s first-ever case of PED occurred last month
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
A disease that can be devastating to swine operations has spread to another Alberta farm.
A 600-head farrow-to-finish hog farm has tested positive for porcine epidemic diarrhea, Alberta Pork confirmed on Thursday.
That confirmation brings the province’s number of infected farms to two after officials discovered the disease on a 400-head farm in January.
Mortality rates can be up to 100 per cent for piglets that contract the disease.
Investigators are working to determine if the two cases are connected or isolated incidents.
“At this time, it is uncertain whether the first and second reported cases of PED are linked in any way,” Alberta Pork said in a statement.
Preventing the disease from spreading further will require a collaborative approach, said Javier Bahamon, quality assurance and production manager with Alberta Pork.
PED is “here now and we need to be more vigilant,” he told Global News on Friday. “The industry and the government are working together to contain the disease.”
Officials have suspended traffic to and from the infected farm. The farmer is increasing biosecurity measures and is cooperating with an investigation into the source of the disease.
The disease may have arrived from China, Bahamon told Global News.
Government representatives are confident the disease hasn’t spread to another province.
Test results are “telling us that further spread doesn’t seem to be happening, at least not that we’re being able to detect right now within Alberta,” Dr. Julia Keenliside, a veterinary epidemiologist with Alberta Agriculture, told Farmscape today.