By Bruce Cochrane
The Veterinary Counsel with the Canadian Pork Council reports the Canadian pork industry is doing a fantastic job in its effort to rid the country of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea.
The Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network's mid-December Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Update indicates the Manitoba operations that were infected in May and September are making excellent progress in moving toward eradicating the virus.
Dr. Egan Brockhoff, the Veterinary Counsel with the Canadian Pork Council reports, as we move into the new year, Canada is doing a fantastic job keeping this virus down and working really hard to push it out of the country.
Dr. Egan Brockhoff-Canadian Pork Council:
The three herds that were positive in May, the finisher sites are presumptive negative.
The animals are testing negative and we've got negative and naive animals back in those sites.
The sow herd that was positive in the fall has stopped shedding the virus and the pig environment, where the little guys are all running around, is testing negative and so they're able to farrow pigs into that negative environment and animal health is continuing to improve.
We've had more cases again this year but we continue to see a positive downtrend in the number of affected sites across Canada.
B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan remain negative for the virus.
Manitoba is doing a great job getting the positive sites negative.
Ontario has done a really good job moving their positive sites to negative and less than 4 percent of the primary sites positive in Ontario remain positive.
Quebec is testing negative.
The positive herd in the Maritimes all tests negative now and those pigs have resumed normal market behavior.
Dr. Brockhoff acknowledges it's always more complicated to remove virus from a farrow to finish site versus the finish barns where it's fairly easy to eradicate the virus in the populations of more mature animals.
Source: Farmscape