Pork producers recently got a first look at Manitoba Pork’s plan to virtually eliminate PED from the provincial hog industry.
The draft plan’s goal is to eliminate 96 per cent of porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) infections by 2027, according to the presentation at the Nov. 1 producer meeting. Details are pending.
The draft showed objectives to reduce the number of infected farms over time; shorten the time farms take to reach transitional status; develop farm-level protocols for PED management; and enhance biosecurity sector-wide.
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Interventions include rapid and aggressive responses, enhanced sow immunity and development of a PED elimination plan.
A PED working group has been developing the plan since early this year. It commissioned the Western College of Veterinary Medicine to study what other jurisdictions have done to contain PED, including major pork producing states like Iowa and Minnesota.
Some areas have “experimented” with living with the disease, Manitoba Pork general manager Cam Dahl told producers, but “inevitably the solution comes back to the elimination of PED.”
The 96 per cent elimination figure is based on projections that the industry can “probably manage” 10 infections per year if it acts aggressively, said Jenelle Hamblin, Manitoba Pork’s manager of swine health.
From there, the industry will work to learn from each aggressive response and apply results to reduce cases further.
This year, weather and labour shortages lengthened the time it took to move a farm from a confirmed infection to a transitional stage of confirming the disease’s elimination, Hamblin said. The longer a farm stays positive for PED, the longer an outbreak will last.
Manitoba Pork also has plans to create a “one-stop shop” for PED information and planning, Hamblin said.
Producers have learned through outbreaks about how to strengthen biosecurity, she said, noting those better management practices need to be applied across the sector.
