Behind the Lines - August 2014
Monday, August 4, 2014
Even though the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said in March that scientific testing "cannot confirm a link between feed containing blood plasma and porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) cases in Canada," farmers and veterinarians alike remain concerned about the role that blood plasma products play. That is in spite of pressure from plasma makers to put their otherwise beneficial products back into feeds. Senior staff editor Don Stoneman writes about the differing viewpoints in his cover story beginning on page 6.
As David Alves, the Ontario agriculture ministry's manager of veterinary science and policy, noted at the Ontario Pork Congress, "the bigger picture is that (PED) is not ravaging the Ontario industry the way it is in the United States." There, as the Wall Street Journal notes, some large pork-producing systems continue to use plasma products. And Alves gave high marks to feed provider Grand Valley Fortifiers for voluntarily withdrawing those feeds.
Maintaining health is key to pig production and viruses aren't the only threats. Our herd health writer, Ernest Sanford, describes the increase in cases of M. hyosynoviae arthritis, a bacterial infection, in herds, and notes that treatment is difficult.
The other mainstay, of course, is feed. Swine nutritionist Janice Murphy outlines the benefits of fine-tuning dietary fibre in the last weeks before marketing hogs. And in the same vein, Eye On Europe writer Norman Dunn describes a British-designed feeding system that promises "a level of fine-tuning in hog feeding never achieved before." Eye On Europe starts on page 32. BP
ROBERT IRWIN