By Bruce Cochrane
Manitoba's chief veterinary officer is encouraging the province's pork producers and industries that provide services to those producers to maintain their focus on biosecurity.
From February 2014 to January 2015 5 Manitoba swine herds were identified as infected with Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea.
Late last month the office of Manitoba's Chief Veterinary Officer announced, all premises in Manitoba previously confirmed to have PED, have now been determined to be PED Presumptive Negative.
Dr. Megan Bergman, Manitoba's Chief Veterinary Officer, says there is still a risk of transmission.
Dr. Megan Bergman-Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Development:
Certainly Manitoba's swine industry has a lot of contact with the United States and so that continues to be a risk for us in terms of introduction of not only PED but other emerging diseases as well and so, when we're talking about dealing with high risk high traffic sites which have contact with the U.S. we need to ensure that our operations continue to make sure they're implementing effective biosecurity measures so that we're not transmitting from these high traffic sites into our swine herd and so that's really a critical move and it certainly continues to be a risk for us.
Producers really need to be very diligent about maintaining that high level of biosecurity when they're coming into contact with anything from transporters to assembly yards to abattoirs.
The other thing that's something to be kept in mind is that we do know that this virus can survive for extended periods in manure pits and lagoons and so it is possible for this virus to survive for up to a year from what we've been hearing so far and so it's critical that industries such as manure haulers are making sure that they're implementing extra steps to ensure they're not spreading the virus between herds.
Dr. Bergman notes PED does like cool wet weather so this time of year the virus can be more resilient in the environment so we know there is a higher potential risk for transmission.
She says the winter cold weather does seem to help keep the virus in check but two of our cases were detected in the thick of winter so we can't be complacent about the risk.
Source: Farmscape