Effectiveness of Manitoba’s PED Elimination Plan Demonstrated

Jan 20, 2025

The Director of Swine Health with Manitoba Pork suggests a Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea break just over one month ago has demonstrated the effectiveness of Manitoba's PED elimination plan. Manitoba's first and only case of PED in 2024, reported in a finisher operation in southeastern Manitoba in early December, triggered a response under Manitoba's PED Elimination Plan.

Jenelle Hamblin, the Director of Swine Health with Manitoba Pork, says the outbreak has been limited to one operation and that farm is now working its way through elimination.

Quote-Jenelle Hamblin-Manitoba Pork:

At suspicion, so even before confirmation on the ground, that premises is immediately put under strict biocontainment and that is outlined as part of our elimination plan and enhanced biosecurity is implemented, limiting your ins and outs until you know what you're dealing with that biocontainment is put on immediately.

Then, once it was confirmed to be PED, that biocontainment and enhanced biosecurity remains.In terms of elimination, our plan does outline the tried-and-true elimination protocols or steps that we know well here in Manitoba so it did give us the opportunity to practice our plans and what we've put together and, to this point, I'm very proud of the work the sector has done to implement the PED action plan, to hold the cases just to one.We haven't seen any spillover to any other premises at this point.

That enhanced biosecurity in the area remains a high priority, especially as the disease works toward elimination.We've been over a month since that case has broken in early December and we haven't seen spill over so I am optimistic and giving credit to the sector for the work they've done to respond to this case on the farm as well as protect the premises that are close by.

Hamblin says strategies will look a little different for different contamination pathways but enhanced biosecurity will provide protection not only from PED but from other known or potentially unknown pathogens.

Source : Farmscape.ca

Video: Wheat Yields in USA and China Threatened by Heat Waves Breaking Enzymes

A new peer reviewed study looks at the generally unrecognized risk of heat waves surpassing the threshold for enzyme damage in wheat.

Most studies that look at crop failure in the main food growing regions (breadbaskets of the planet) look at temperatures and droughts in the historical records to assess present day risk. Since the climate system has changed, these historical based risk analysis studies underestimate the present-day risks.

What this new research study does is generate an ensemble of plausible scenarios for the present climate in terms of temperatures and precipitation, and looks at how many of these plausible scenarios exceed the enzyme-breaking temperature of 32.8 C for wheat, and exceed the high stress yield reducing temperature of 27.8 C for wheat. Also, the study considers the possibility of a compounded failure with heat waves in both regions simultaneously, this greatly reducing global wheat supply and causing severe shortages.

Results show that the likelihood (risk) of wheat crop failure with a one-in-hundred likelihood in 1981 has in today’s climate become increased by 16x in the USA winter wheat crop (to one-in-six) and by 6x in northeast China (to one-in-sixteen).

The risks determined in this new paper are much greater than that obtained in previous work that determines risk by analyzing historical climate patterns.

Clearly, since the climate system is rapidly changing, we cannot assume stationarity and calculate risk probabilities like we did traditionally before.

We are essentially on a new planet, with a new climate regime, and have to understand that everything is different now.