The Canadian Pork Council says avoiding any spread of PED will be the first priority following the first case in western Canada in over a year and a half.
On Thursday the Office of Manitoba’s Chief Veterinary Officer reported a PED positive test from a Manitoba batch sow farrowing barn.
This is the first case of PED in western Canada since January 2015 and it comes just weeks after the Canadian Food Inspection Agency began enforcing regulations calling on Canadian swine transports returning from U.S. farms to cleaned in the U.S.
Dr. Egan Brockhoff, the Veterinary Council with the Canadian Pork Council, says the Office of Manitoba’s Chief Veterinary Officer is working with the producer and that producer’s private veterinarian to contain the disease and farmers within a 5 kilometer radius been alerted.
Containment of this disease is the key priority right now at that site and that containment really focuses around enhancing the existing biosecurity protocols that are in place. We know that this farm had very good biosecurity in place. We know a traceback is ongoing and it’s going to be a few more days before we understand exactly where this virus has come from and how it got into the barn.
There’s no question that we’re going to focus closely on the key risk factors, which are contaminated transport, biosecurity, proper biosecurity protocols when pigs are loaded and unloaded from sites, focusing on those key entry points into the barn where personnel come into the barn and where supplies come into the barn and just review all of those areas and that’s going to be the part of the traceback that’s going to take a little bit of time. ~ Dr. Egan Brockhoff – Canadian Pork Council
Dr. Brockhoff says we don’t know if there’s a relationship between the transport regulation changes and what’s happening on this farm.
He says the timing is unfortunate and is something we hope to understand as soon as possible.
