The Manager of Swine Health Programs with Manitoba Pork credits a significant drop in the number of cases of PED this year compared to last to changes made by pork producers in response to lessons learned from previous outbreaks.
Last year 82 farms in Manitoba were infected by Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea, the vast majority of which have completed their cleanups, compared to two farms infected so far this year.
Jenelle Hamblin, the Manager of Swine Health Programs with Manitoba Pork, says there's many risk factors that need to be considered when it comes to PED or any on farm pathogen.
Clip-Jenelle Hamblin-Manitoba Pork:
The biggest one that we really focus on and reiterate is on-farm biosecurity. What is coming onto your farm or into your barn and what steps need to be taken in order to minimise the risk. On farm biosecurity has certainly been evaluated and re-evaluated to tighten things up and see where there could be gaps that need to be filled or things that could be improved.
Also transport. We've leaned a lot about how pigs move and effective transport cleaning and disinfection which has made the risk level very very very low in terms of truck-trailer biosecurity which is great, and that really all comes from lessons learned from previous outbreaks. A big one that I think a lot of people are focussing on to do risk mitigation is around manure application.
When that manure is applied where it's being applied from a previously infected operation, communicating that out to neighbouring farms through our Manitoba Coordinated Disease Response and trying to evaluate and do as much as we can to risk mitigate and prevent that virus from finding its way into our operations.
Source : Farmscape