By Bruce Cochrane
Manitoba's chief veterinary officer is encouraging the province's pork producers to step up their focus on biosecurity as the weather turns colder.
Since February 14 there have been 4 on-farm cases of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea identified in Manitoba, including 2 cases in finisher barns and 2 cases in sow barns.
Dr. Meagan Bergman, Manitoba's chief veterinary officer, says producers at the positive sites have been diligent in working with their veterinarians to restore negative status and are making progress.
Clip-Dr. Meagan Bergman-Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Development:
We just have a heightened vigilance in terms of biosecurity both by our producers, our Manitoba Pork Council, as well as our private veterinarians.
We've always had really good biosecurity plans in place and having PED present in Manitoba has really triggered folks to review their processes and really take a look at who's coming on site and ensure they're following the right biosecurity protocols.
Biosecurity will always be our main focus.
It's our best method of keeping this virus out of our barns.
We're encouraging everyone to make sure that they're stopping everyone as much as possible at the farm gate.
If they don't have to come onto the site, don't let them come onto the site, and if individuals are required to come onto the site, that they're following the protocols that have been established by both the farms and their private veterinarians.
That's going to be our best line of defense.
We need to be really conscious of when we move into winter, the fact that our disinfectants will require a higher contact time in order to continue to be effective in cold weather and we'll often have to look at increasing the concentration of those disinfectants as well, to ensure they continue to work.
We know the virus survives well in cold wet weather so we need to be very vigilant in our processes at this point.
Dr. Bergman notes, of 19 high traffic sites, 9 have tested positive for the virus periodically.
She says a lot of these sites have been able to regain their negative status by implementing bio-containment strategies and cleaning and disinfecting, while others are simply attempting to manage traffic flows to limit the amount of contamination.
Source: Farmscape