The manager of the Canada West Swine Health Intelligence Network is warning pork producers of the need to report pigs that display signs of having or having had blisters and request rule out testing for foreign animal disease.
Last spring the identification of blisters on culled sows heading from Canada to the U.S. for slaughter, triggered a series of foreign animal disease investigations and prompted the USDA to halt the import of culled sows until foreign animal diseases, such as African Swine Fever and Foot and Mouth Disease, were ruled out.
Canada West Swine Health Intelligence Network manager Dr. Jette Christensen says blisters on pigs must be reported to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Quote-Dr. Jette Christensen-Canada West Swine Health Intelligence Network:
Blisters or healed lesions that could look like what had been blisters were detected on culled sows going to the U.S. for slaughter and that created a chain reaction where there were too many suspicions for Seneca Valley virus or Foot and Mouth disease.So that made USDA have a lot of investigations that they needed to follow up on and so they started to push back and last summer we actually experienced quite a disruption to the cull sow flow from swine herds in Canada to assembly yards to slaughter in the U.S. and it took quite a bit of work from provincial governments, from CFIA, USDA and the assembly yards to come up with a surveillance plan and do extra surveillance to get the flow going again.
So, there's still environmental samples taken to have monitoring going on especially at assembly yards to make sure that they control what ever is on the assembly yard.What happens in the U.S. is really difficult to guess.It depends on how many shipments will come down there with something that looks like blisters.If it's only one or two shipments we can hope that everything will flow but if it's too many they'll certainly put restrictions on the movements again, that's my best guess.
Dr. Christensen stresses, if you see any skin lesions, you need to call your vet.
Source : Farmscape.ca