The General Manager of Manitoba Pork is applauding the efforts of the province’s hog farmers, pork processors and transporters to improve biosecurity and reign in the spread of swine disease in the province.
Introduced in 2023, Manitoba’s Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Elimination Plan involves enhanced, industry-wide biosecurity, rapid response protocols, strict surveillance and sector wide communication and collaboration and is credited with helping reduce the number of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea outbreaks in the province from a peak of 132 in 2021-22 to single digit numbers annually since.
Cam Dahl, the General Manager of Manitoba Pork, says the demand for Canadian pigs in the United States remains strong, especially for isowean pigs due to disease pressures south of the border.
Farmers and the industry in Manitoba really do need to be congratulated for the efforts that they made to keep diseases out of barns and to control the spread of disease when it does show up. We see diseases like PRRS and PED to the south, we see outbreaks growing in other provinces and 2025 was one of those years that was a good disease year, if you can call something that.
We had only three outbreaks of PED when the cycle would indicate that we should have more. That’s another good news story and its due to the efforts around biosecurity that farmers and processors and transporters are working together to ensure that those measures are in place. Again, that’s something we need to continue to pay attention to in 2026.
~ Cam Dahl, Manitoba Pork
Dahl notes that the biosecurity and biocontainment enhancements introduced in response to Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea as part of Manitoba’s PED elimination Plan are also helping protect farms from other diseases.
