Saskatchewan's chief veterinary officer says the latest reports of PED positive farms in Manitoba should serve as a reminder of the importance of maintaining strict biosecurity.
In September two Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea positive sow barn sites were identified in Manitoba.
Dr. Betty Althouse, the Chief Veterinary Officer with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, says PED is circulating in parts of the Canadian swine herd as well as in the U.S. so any time pigs are delivered to sites where there is co-mingling it should be assumed those sites are positive.
Dr. Betty Althouse-Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture:
To date we have not had any positive premises identified in Saskatchewan.
It is a notifiable animal disease so if there were a lab diagnosis of PED we would be notified.
As part of our monitoring we are doing weekly or bi-weekly site tests so manure or fecal samples are being collected at sites where there is co-mingling in the province.
We are sampling at the one federal hog plant, we did some sampling earlier at one of the provincial plants, we continue to sample at a couple of other co-mingling sites as well and to date it's over 600 samples taken, all of those have been negative.
But we do have a lot of other companies doing their own testing and so if any positives are identified on that sampling we are notified of those as well.
So on a couple of occasions we've had, I think three actually in total, we've had three positive trucks that have come back when they were sampled as just part of the routine sampling for the barn and in those cases the trucks had delivered to places out of province and were likely contaminated there.
Dr. Althouse stresses it takes a very small amount of virus to infect a barn so the message is biosecurity biosecurity biosecurity.
Source: Farmscape