With more and more disease outbreaks and more demands from so-called consumer groups, organizations across the country keep moving to more regulations and plans to ensure safety and appease those who call for it.
Heather Carriere, the manager of B.C. Pork’s PED Response Project says all of the province’s pork producers have now endorsed a new bio-containment plan.
As part of its PED Response Project, B.C. Pork has developed a bio-containment plan they can use should they identify PED virus on a B.C. farm.
Carriere says the plan has identified 15 important steps.
“Some of the key components include having all of the contact information in one place, not only for the vet and the farm information, but also all the associated trades people to the site,” she said. “By having all of that information handy it minimizes stress and time. When you’re responding to something like PED time is of the essence.”
Carriere says the plan contains both general and specific information. For example one of the steps says to call the herd veterinarian, general and then it has a spot for a producer to write their vet’s name and phone number making it specific.
“It was a really interesting exercise for the producers to go through because there are the usual ones that everyone thinks of like feed trucks but there are others that you may miss in times of stress like the hydro company or even recycling trucks,” she said. “By having that information handy, that was really important as far as minimizing the stress and time.”
The biosecurity plan also highlights the enhanced biosecurity steps that need following. So things that the producers might normally do, they just need to write them again. In times of stress producers may not remember everything that needs doing. By having them there, it just alleviates that part of the stress, she adds. Carriere says the plan also calls on the producer to give B.C. Pork and their herd veterinarian permission to identify their farm as infected. While some may be hesitant, producers recognize the need for good communication and all producers readily agreed.
And who knows what’s going to show up next time when people least expect it because environmental testing has shown PED, TGE and Delta Coronavirus remain a threat in western Canada.
Because of the success of the environmental surveillance programs initiated to monitor high traffic sites for signs of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea, the industry is extending those programs in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba for another fiscal year.
Dr. Julia Keenliside, a Veterinary Epidemiologist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development says the success in dealing with PED is a testament not only to the producers’ hard work but the hard work of everyone in the industry to work together to keep this disease out.
“It certainly is wonderful to be able to report that it’s been a year and a half, actually 19 months, since PED was first diagnosed in Canada in Ontario and we have yet to have a case diagnosed in Alberta, Saskatchewan or British Columbia,” says Dr. Keenliside. “Manitoba has had about five or six clinical cases but they are well on the way to cleaning those up. While in Alberta, we have had a few Delta Coronavirus virus positives on environmental samples only.
However, she reminds everybody they determined they were not from pig viruses but more likely from a bird virus. There were no sick pigs, not seeing any more of those Delta Coronavirus.
“Saskatchewan, like Alberta, have not had any cases but they have seen a few more positives certainly with PED, TGE and Delta Coronavirus on some of their surveillance samples over the past year from trucks and truck washes,” says Keenliside. “So that does show that the virus is getting trucked into Saskatchewan on occasion but again they’re low positives and they have not had any clinical cases.”
Dr. Keenliside says they’re seeing a much higher level of collaboration in western Canada and as PED season rolls around with the cooler fall weather, provincial representatives will be getting together by phone every two weeks to discuss what’s happening in western Canada with the surveillance programs.  •
— By Harry Siemens