By Bruce Cochrane.
Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development says detection of PED on a livestock trailer earlier this month demonstrates the virus remains a threat.
Earlier this month PED was detected in an environmental sample collected from a livestock trailer in Alberta.
Dr. Julia Keenliside, a Veterinary Epidemiologist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development, told Alberta Pork's August Telephone Town Hall, there have been no cases of PED in Alberta pigs but detection of PED on a trailer is a reminder that the infection moves on transport vehicles.
Dr. Julia Keenliside-Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development:
We looked at the history of the trailer and we found that indeed this trailer was used to deliver cull sows from Manitoba to the U.S. in late July and it was washed in Wisconsin before it came back to Canada.
It then picked up a load of equipment totally unrelated to livestock and delivered the equipment to Alberta at the end of July.
Then, as part of the protocol, it was washed again in Alberta before it would have gone to a farm.
We did six swabs of the truck and only one was positive and it was not a very strong positive so there wasn't a whole lot of virus there.
It does remind us that PED does move on trailers and that our trailers do move a around a lot in western Canada and the U.S. and we still have to diligent to prevent the introduction of PED into Canada.
We've been very successful so far in keeping these diseases out and that's because of the great work we've done.
I don't think for a minute we should get complacent and think these disease aren't a risk because they're not here, obviously there's not really an issue.
In fact the opposite is true.
These diseases are quite the risk for us and it's only through the hard work of everybody throughout the transport chain and the production chain that we've kept these diseases out.
Dr. Keenliside says, although this was only the second PED positive test in Alberta, the virus remains a threat.
Source: Farmscape