Stepped Up Biosecurity Among Manure Applicators Successful in Containing Spread of PED

By Bruce Cochrane

The executive director of the Manitoba Livestock Manure Management Initiative credits the efforts of the province's swine manure applicators for helping contain any spread of PED.

The Manitoba Livestock Manure Management Initiative has been working with swine manure applicators to help them reduce the risks of spreading the virus responsible for Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea.
MLMMI executive director John Carney reports, because the virus is spread through fecal oral transfer, manure applicators have stepped up their focus on biosecurity and adopted several strategies to minimize the risk of contaminating uninfected farms.

John Carney-Manitoba Livestock Manure Management Initiative:
Biosecurity has always been important for manure applicators and so the cleaning and disinfecting protocols that they follow, the training that they give their staff, the planning that they do with their jobs, all of those good practices that are established continue to support keeping the disease under control.

There's certainly more focus on training, more focus on communicating with producers.

As we all know there's fortunately very few farms in Manitoba that are positive for the virus but that does raise the question for manure applicators, how do you deal with your clients that have positive manure?

So the approach is to prioritize the barns and the clients that are disease fee and go and pump that manure first and then and only then to turn the attention to barns that have been infected with the virus and then go and pump that manure afterwards and where ever possible make those the last sites that are pumped at the end of the season or as close to the end of the season as possible.

Carney says these efforts have been highly successful but we can't take that for granted and we've got to continue on with strong biosecurity and strong communication.

Source: Farmscape