PED remains a concern in Ontario

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

by SUSAN MANN

Ontario will probably never be able to pinpoint exactly how porcine epidemic diarrhea virus slipped onto a Middlesex County farrow-to-finish operation in January, says an Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food spokesperson.

“We do know PED has been circulating widely in the United States and Ontario’s pork industry is closely linked with that in the U.S.,” Susan Murray says by email. “We do know mechanical contamination has been found (trucks) and a possible link was also made to virus in feed.”

As of April 4, the number of confirmed cases on Ontario farms stands at 47 since the first case was identified on Jan. 22. Initially most cases on farms, those in January and February, were on farrow-to-finish or farrow-to-wean operations. But then in March, the virus slammed into finisher operations. During that month there was a total of 19 confirmed cases with all but four occurring on finisher operations.

PED virus is not a food safety or human health risk. It doesn’t affect other animals besides pigs. Pork is still a safe choice for consumers to eat. The virus is a serious disease in swine production and can cause 100 per cent mortality in piglets. Older pigs have the vomiting and diarrhea caused by the virus but they generally recover.

As part of its surveillance for PED virus, agriculture ministry officials have been doing testing at assembly and trucking yards and processing plants since Jan. 25. Confirmed samples have been found along with many negative samples at those locations. Where there are positive samples, cleaning and disinfecting is enhanced.

There could be a number of explanations for the movement of the virus to finisher operations in March, Murray says. “It may be related to the fact that finisher barns are further along the supply chain and receive animals later in the growth cycle.”

Mike DeGroot, Ontario Pork’s national biosecurity coordinator, says the first wave of infections in January and February in the province “was possibly linked to feed contamination” and that affected the farrowing and nursery sectors of the industry. Since then the virus has been present in the province and the infections are more related to “biosecurity gaps or lapses regarding the transport of pigs,” he explains, adding that possibly contaminated trucks are backing up near the finisher barns to take pigs to market.

The rate of infection continues to be steady in Ontario, he says. But as the weather warms up that infection rate should slow down. Still farmers need to maintain their heightened biosecurity protocols throughout the warmed up weather.

The virus survives outside of a pig better in cold weather and truck washing and drying is much trickier in the colder weather, he says, noting the virus’ presence in the environment will die off once the warmer weather comes.

Murray says given that the virus is endemic in the United States, that it’s extremely virulent and that Ontario had a very cold winter, the province’s swine industry is doing an admirable job keeping PED out of Ontario barns.

From here, Ontario farmers must maintain continued vigilance and biosecurity. The ministry has been working with the industry to address PED virus since it began circulating in the United States last year and has worked to mitigate its impact since the virus arrived on the Ontario farm in January, she notes.

Other provinces have also had cases. There has been one confirmed case this winter in each of Prince Edward Island, Manitoba and Quebec.

Tim Seeber, executive director of the Prince Edward Island Hog Commodity Marketing Board, says the reason they’ve been able to contain the virus to one farm “comes down to biosecurity, biosecurity, and biosecurity. But we’ve also been able to isolate the movements in and out of that facility.”

Personnel and truck movements “are very controlled” and the farm was basically quarantined, he explains. Currently, the farm isn’t quarantined as strictly as it was when the case was first confirmed Feb. 14, and there have been shipments of finished hogs and cull sows from the farm but “they were under strict protocols” to ensure there wasn’t contamination of other facilities. As to how the farm got PED virus, “we’re pretty confident that it came in by feed,” he says.

There are 22 commercial hog producers on PEI and 5,000 sows. There aren’t any processors in the Maritimes, so all finished hogs go to Quebec or Ontario for slaughter.

Seeber says the density of farming operations on PEI is different than in Ontario and that may be a contributing factor in their continued success in containing PED virus.

Andrew Dickson, general manager for the Manitoba Pork Council, says there are a number of factors that contribute to their ability to contain the virus on one farm in Manitoba. One is the amount of traffic between pigs farms in Manitoba is relatively small.

Another is trailers returning from the United States are “sealed, washed and disinfected” when they come into Manitoba, he says. “We don’t trust the U.S. washing facilities.”

Manitoba has more than 300,000 sows. Last year farmers there raised and slaughtered 4.4 million pigs in the province and shipped three million weanling pigs to the U.S., mostly to Minnesota and Iowa. The biggest hog processor in Canada, the Maple Leaf plant, is in Brandon, while a second processor run by HyLife Foods is located in Neepawa. About half the pigs from Saskatchewan are sent to Manitoba for processing.

The farm in Manitoba with the PED case that was confirmed Feb. 14 has a set of finisher barns and the farmer “self imposed his own quarantine,” Dickson notes, adding there weren’t any sows infected. “One of the problems they have in Ontario is the virus got into sow herds.”

Dickson says they’re not sure how the Manitoba farm got the virus. “We’re still trying to get the farm cleaned up and that’s going to take a couple more months yet.”

“The other big key to our success here is we practice very high biosecurity standards on individual farms,” he says, noting Manitoba’s operations are bigger and more consolidated than farms in Ontario. “Our barns are newer than many of the operations in Ontario and they’re designed so that it’s easier to practice very high biosecurity and keep the barns relatively clean of diseases.” BF