Research Expected to Help Determine when PED Infected Manure Storages Can be Considered Negative

Research being conducted in Manitoba and Alberta is expected to help epidemiologists determine when the stored manure on a PED infected farm can be considered negative. As part of research conducted in Manitoba on behalf of Swine Innovation Porc, scientists examining the longevity of Porcine Epidemic diarrhea virus in stored manure have determined that, after two years contaminated manure is no longer infective and now, as part of a similar study underway in Alberta the goal is to further narrow that time frame.

Javier Bahamon, the Quality Assurance and Production Manager with Alberta Pork, says the goal is to determine how long stored manure remains infective and when it's safe to consider those farms negative.

Clip-Javier Bahamon-Alberta Pork:

This specific information is going to be used in different ways. One obviously is the study of the epidemiological links between one farm to the other and understanding if that can be one of the venues that the virus can move.

That can be one answer with this. The other portion that I think is very important is how the industry perceives the disease and how we can minimize the impact on the producer. We know that the virus is there, we know that it's positive in the lagoons but, with this work, we can reduce the amount of time a farm can be called positive.

That's very important for how the farms can come back to a normal basis and to get to the market that they used to go without posing any risk to the industry as a whole. That's very important for all of us to understand that dynamic and that we can make more informed decisions when the time comes for any farm that's been infected by PED.