Alberta’s swine industry continues to hold the PED virus at bay through rigorous sampling at key sites and stringent protocols aimed at stomping the disease out before it takes hold.
But just in case anyone feels the protocols may be a bit too rigid, Alberta Pork confirmed late in October that a positive result had come back from samples taken at an assembly yard in Southern Alberta.
Subsequent investigations revealed that someone had become a bit careless and the virus was tracked in from a truck.
“The positive sample was taken from an office space,” Alberta Pork said in a news release issued shortly after the sample came back.
“Other samples taken in high pig traffic areas at the same site, such as the loading dock and scales, came back negative. A plan is in place to reduce the risk of the spread of the disease, investigate and manage the situation.”
Producers were also informed shortly afterward that the virus had shown up in a finishing barn in Southern Ontario.
That virus does not appear to be a new outbreak, Alberta veterinarian Egan Brockhoff said after discussing the issue with his Ontario counterpart, Doug MacDougald. Both vets have been running point on the disease since 2013, when the initial outbreaks were reported in the United States.
The latest incident in Ontario seems to have been a lateral transfer from one barn to another on the same farm, says Brockhoff.
The most recent incidents serve to remind all producers, truckers and handlers that it is essential to keep up their efforts to stop the disease from migrating between facilities, he says.
Producers and staff attending the annual Red Deer Swine Technology Workshop (RDSTW) on Nov. 5 gained some insight into the differences between how the disease has run on farms in the United States and Canada.
Agricultural economist Steve Stitzlein, chief operating officer in the swine division for Ohio-based Heimerl Farms Ltd., gave an overview of how PED is managed in their facilities.
Heimerl Farms keeps about 7,500 sows in three operations and currently markets about 350,000 hogs per year.
PED first hit their Pleasantville farm in November of 2013, said Stitzlein.
“Needless to say, I had a whole head of hair when we started this.”
Stitzlein says he had been through an outbreak of transmissible gastroenteritis (TGE) in the past, and it was nothing like PED.
At the time of his talk, US producers had lost about eight million animals, estimated at 2.7 pigs per sow.
“What we’ve learned, it’s more active in warm environments, it’s more difficult to control in sow herds, it’s a lot more severe, clinically, and there’s no cross protection. What they’re telling me, a virus the size of a pencil head could infect a 2,500-sow herd within two days.”
Stitzlein has found evidence that the virus will remain dormant in manure pits for a considerable time. He recounted an incident in which a producer agitated the pit, which consequently released the virus and broke his barn.
The outbreak revealed “a lot of holes” in the defence layers on US farms, said Stitzlein.
Bio-security has been ramped up, with an emphasis on transport, packing plants and transfer facilities.
“When we broke at Pleasantville, the day before we broke we sold a group of weaner gilts to a customer on a Thursday and on Friday we picked up pigs and on Saturday I got a call we had diarrhea in the pigs and those pigs we broke on Thursday never broke.”
Heimerl uses its own trucks and drivers to transport pigs, says Stitzlein. The truck used to bring those new animals in had been washed and dried, but was not thoroughly sanitized, a process he calls tab drying.
“I guess we were our own worst enemy at that point, because we brought it into our own herd.”
Five weeks later, the same herd broke with delta coronavirus.
“Essentially, we had four weeks with no pigs. Everything 10 days and under died.”
A decision was made to “break” all of the sows through an oral feedback to develop antibodies against the virus. A number of the animals aborted their piglets and, four weeks after the initial outbreak, the mortality rate for piglets 10 days and under had dropped from 100 to 50 per cent, says Stitzlein.
The Delta virus hit their Mad River facility a few weeks later, but didn’t hurt quite as bad, he says.
Alongside the impact on production and the resulting financial loss, the outbreak took a horrible toll on Heimerl employees, he said.
“It was really weird to go through that barn and hear no pigs, but you still have the sows. It was very hard on the crew, they had very low motivation to come to work, a lot of depression.”
The manager on the Pleasantville unit was sympathetic, using a variety of tactics to keep her team as upbeat as possible and working with the sows to help them through the abortions and loss of piglets.
Administered hormones, the sows re-bred readily enough, but there were problems with hardened teats because they had not nursed their previous piglets.
Pig production at Pleasantville had dropped to 17.79 pigs per sow per year by the first quarter of 2014 from 26.73 psy in the third quarter of the previous year. Numbers were back on track and predicted at about 28 psy for the last quarter of 2014, says Stitzlein.
Financially, with the finishing barns sitting empty for a period of time, the farms production costs for the next year zoomed up by $7 per weaned pig as a result of the outbreaks, says Stitzlein.
Since the outbreak, Heimerl Farms has significantly tightened its bio-security measures, including making sure the trucks are absolutely clean and sanitized, he says.
New buildings were erected at the entrance of each farm to create a barrier between the farm and delivery trucks bringing in new supplies.
Staff and service people are trained in the updated protocols and the reasons for those protocols are given so they understand the necessity of such stringent measures.
While farms in the US have been focused on managing the disease, Canadian producers are still working at keeping the virus out of           those barns that have not already been hit, says Brockhoff.
“One of the key things we’ve done is much more focus on bio-security and training. We’ve put a lot of effort into getting veterinarians on farms routinely to audit bio-security.”
Effort has also been placed on getting veterinarians into truck washes to audit their facilities and practices.
Possibly the biggest factor in the successes felt to date has been the willingness of people throughout the production chain to acknowledge the problem and deal with it together, he says.
“Open dialogue, people coming together to share their experience, people being open and up front about their health status and willing to look in the mirror and say, you know, I’m going to share my information with my fellow pork producers and my fellow veterinarians and my fellow industry reps, that’s been a huge bonus for us,” Brockhoff said in an interview following the Alberta Pork AGM.
“Trying to hide problems and ignore problems doesn’t do anyone any good. It’s been exceptional, what’s been able to happen here in Canada,” he said.
Alberta Pork continues to host regular Town Hall meetings and phone-ins to update producers and provides continual updates on the producer side of its website, www.albertapork.com  •
— By Brenda Kossowan