OIE declares properly prepared nursery feed ingredient PED-free

Thursday, October 9, 2014

by SUSAN MANN

Cambridge-based livestock nutrition company, Grand Valley Fortifiers, has no plans to revert back to using porcine blood plasma in its nursery feed products despite an international organization saying this week the product is unlikely to cause porcine epidemic diarrhea virus.

Earlier this week the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said in a press release even though spray-dried porcine blood plasma has been suspected in some countries as a probable infection source, its experts are saying “such products are not a likely source of infection provided that good manufacturing practices for animal ration formulation and production protocols” are followed.

There are 63 confirmed PED cases in Ontario since the first one was discovered in Middlesex County in January, including one variant strain and seven cases of delta coronavirus. PED does not pose a risk to human health or food safety but it is a contagious viral disease of pigs that causes diarrhea, vomiting and dehydration. The virus kills almost all nursing piglets, while older pigs can recover.

Ian Ross, president and CEO of Grand Valley Fortifiers, says the OIE ad hoc group on PED that developed the blood plasma statement is led by the International Feed Industry Federation and composed of experts from affected regions along with members of the blood plasma industry. They contributed relevant scientific information and data. “People just need to recognize who was really leading the ad hoc group and just be aware it was primarily driven by the feed industry federation and the blood plasma industry.”

Ross adds while he doesn’t have a problem with the OIE statement, “good manufacturing practices are generally dynamic so the good manufacturing practices in the plasma industry have most likely changed since PED came out or especially since our recall and our press release.” But he is concerned the statement will lead to people “losing sight of what the findings were here Canada and they will just continue to read articles that come out from other parts of the world and that are driven by the feed industry association and the plasma industry.”

Ross says they want to ensure “the truth of what occurred here” doesn’t get buried and forgotten.

He was referring to the recall Grand Valley launched in February after learning from the provincial agriculture ministry samples of its nursery feeds that contained blood plasma had traces of PED genetic material. Further testing by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency “proved that particular batch of plasma was infectious,” he explains.

The agency announced its results of the testing Feb. 18. But on March 3, the agency issued another release saying it couldn’t demonstrate the feed pellets containing the plasma were capable of causing disease.

At the same time of the recall, Grand Valley stopped using spray-dried blood plasma in its nursery feeds and hasn’t used the product since. The company won’t go back to using the blood plasma product, Ross says. Grand Valley launched new products in March to replace the recalled ones, and they “are actually working better than the old products with plasma, from a feed conversion and average daily gain perspective.”

Mike DeGroot, Ontario Pork national biosecurity coordinator, says here in Ontario “all we know is the epidemiological evidence is very strong that the primary cases in Ontario were linked to feed. I think we had 18 of the first 19 or 20 farms (confirmed to be positive for PED) that were linked to the the contaminated feed.”
 
Even though scientifically some people are seeing spray-dried porcine blood plasma as a low risk product if handled properly, “there’s enough epidemiological evidence in Ontario that there’s a very close association with the contaminated feed source in Ontario and the herds” that became infected, he says, adding not all the herds that received contaminated feed became infected.

In Ontario, the provincial government gave Ontario Pork $2 million in January to use for improving biosecurity measures across the province. Part of that money was used to provide funding to all farms that tested positive for PED.

DeGroot says the money is for vet costs associated with assessing the farms’ situation and developing a plan to eliminate the virus off the farm along with biosecurity improvements to contain the virus on the farm. Testing fees to determine if the virus has successfully been eliminated were also funded. Each farm is receiving a different amount of money. It isn’t a set amount, he explains. BF