Canada's PED Experience Shows Need for Nationally Coordinated Trans-Boundary Disease Management Strategy

By Bruce Cochrane.

An Ontario swine veterinarian says Canada's experience with Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea has clearly demonstrated the need for a nationally coordinated strategy for dealing with trans-boundary animal diseases.

Canada's PED response was discussed last week as part of the 2016 Banff Pork Seminar.

Dr. Doug MacDougald, a veterinarian with Southwest Ontario Veterinary Services, says PED has shown the need for single voice organizations in Quebec, Ontario and Western Canada to formulate specific appropriate plans for the regions and a national equivalent organization to coordinate and collaborate between the regions and with international organizations.

Dr. Doug MacDougald-Southwest Ontario Veterinary Services:
Canada does not have an overarching swine health strategy.
Each of the provinces responded to the trans-boundary disease threat of PED differently and with little coordination between the provinces.

That clearly identified gaps in response and on a common outcome of, for example, elimination.
Some provinces approached this as immediate focus on elimination and others, including Ontario, did not have that strategy.
It's the black hole of trans-boundary disease responsibility.
Unless it's a reportable disease CFIA has no jurisdiction currently with that.
We have to have a national strategy.
We're a national exporting country so we simply have to have a strong regional focus with a national overarching strategy.

Dr. MacDougald says the risk of trans-boundary disease movement has clearly increased as evidenced by the arrival of 2 strains of PED virus and Deltacoronavirus Detected in Saskatchewan Believed to be Avian  in the United States in 2013.
He says globalization of the swine industry and product movement around the globe crates a clear risk factor for the transmission of future trans-boundary and possibly foreign animal disease pathogens.

Source: Farmscape