Manitoba Pork has introduced an 11 step action plan to be implemented when farms suspect they may have encountered Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus.
To help farms contend with Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea, Manitoba Pork has developed an action plan to help them identify the virus, contain any potential spread of the infection and begin the process of cleaning up the site.
The plan was created to familiarize producers with what an affected farm goes through once they have determined they have PED and outline the appropriate timing for various responses.
Mark Fynn, an animal care specialist with Manitoba Pork told those on hand last week for Manitoba Pork's 2015 annual general meeting, the plan is triggered when a producer first detects clinical signs, such as scouring or vomiting and suspects the virus, at which point he or she would call their herd veterinarian.
Clip-Mark Fynn-Manitoba Pork:
The first thing that we're looking to accomplish is biocontaining the site so all the actions sort of revolve around that.
Secondary, after we've biocontained the site, were looking at getting that site back to a negative status so the first thing really to do is to make sure that you're testing the site to see if it has the presence of the virus and then stopping any movement onto and off the site.
A lot of those things are accomplished by the Chief Veterinary Officer in their disease investigation but there is a number of other actions that industry can help producers with to make sure they're going through things in the right way.
Fynn says we know biosecurity works at preventing the disease and he suspects the overall PED risk has decreased somewhat because of the uptake of an even higher level of biosecurity.
He notes the virus is quite prevalent in the U.S. so if we have a lot of U.S. contact through transport the risk rises so we have to keep up those biosecurity protocols indefinitely.
By Bruce Cochrane