Weaning piglets was hard on the back: bend down, pick up a 12-pound piglet, vaccinate it, bend to put it down again, this time sorted by sex. Rinse and repeat hundreds of times, sometimes for hours.

Surely a company with the resources of the Manitoba-based pork giant could help develop a better way? As it turns out, it could.

Why it matters: HyLife Foods expects fewer aching backs after barns are set up with new piglet weaning ramps.

The request made its way to HyLife’s continuous improvement team, a segment of the company devoted to supporting on-the-ground solutions based on farmer feedback. Seeing its value, the engineers and design team got to work.

[RELATED] China pork output hits highest in eight years

Over the next months, a number of prototype weaning ramps were tested. The result has since been installed in seven barns, and every remaining facility in HyLife’s network is now asking for one of their own, according to Lyle Loewen, senior vice-president of the company’s farm division.

“It’s actually really caught on. People are appreciating the way it makes their work life better,” he said.

The ramp raises piglets to a comfortable height, allowing staff to work without bending over.

“The ramp can be adjusted to the optimal height for our employees,” Loewen said. “In other words, if it’s a group of shorter people working on it, it can be a lower ramp.”

Piglets are herded in groups of 20 to 25 into an inclining chute and into the initial segment of the ramp. Once all animals are at workable height, a pulley-operated gate closes behind them. A similar gate on the other end of the segment is then opened, animals are moved into the final area of the apparatus and the first section is again closed. Animals are then vaccinated and slid down a ‘male’ or ‘female’ slide.

That middle segment is important for workflow, Loewen noted. The design of the ramp allows employees to move the next group into position while the first group is being vaccinated and sorted.

“What happened in one of the original prototypes was they just had one holding area, so the piglets came in and, once they were vaccinated and slid out according to their sex, then [employees] had to wait for another group to come in,” he said. “Now there’s no waiting time.”

Accolades

The invention has won its share of second looks from the industry.

In mid-January, two sow farm employees, Robert Lafrenière and Barak Doell, took home the F.X. Aherne Prize for Innovative Pork Production from the 2023 Banff Pork Seminar because of the ramp.

The company also got an unsolicited nod from animal behaviour scientist and animal handling system designer Temple Grandin. She was touring a HyLife facility near Steinbach when the weaning ramp caught her eye, Loewen said.

The professor from Colorado State University went on the record, saying the design should be a sector standard.

“This innovative system should be in every sow farm for vaccinating weaned piglets…I can’t say enough good things about it. It should go industry-wide,” Grandin said.

“I was amazed how well those little pigs used the ramp; that’s the kind of stuff that makes handling easier.”

Piglets do have to endure a slide at the end of the process, which Loewen admitted he had initial questions about. But the system has been praised for lowering animal stress as well as employee health.

Animals are minimally handled, which reduces joint stress, the company has said. Loewen also noted the slide gradient is gentle and a comfort pad is placed in the landing zone.

“It’s not like a slide in a park where a kid really comes racing down,” he said.

The invention may speed up vaccination, since the process involves less walking and fewer pauses for back stretches.

*Update: A location reference to the HyLife facility that Temple Grandin visited was changed.

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“When African swine fever went from wild pigs in Germany into the domestic herd, the first time was a farm with four pigs, and the second time was a farm with six pigs,” said Cam Dahl, Manitoba Pork’s general manager during the group’s annual general meeting on April 6.

“ASF moving into those 10 pigs has cost billions of dollars,” he added.

A July 2021 Reuters report says the two German farms had about 200 pigs and two pigs respectively — both qualify as small farms in Manitoba.

The Manitoba Pork Council says it’s reaching out to smaller-scale hog farmers to talk about animal health and biosecurity.

Manitoba Pork has an email list of between 300 and 400 small-scale farms, said Mark Fynn, the council’s manager of quality assurance and animal care. These are farms that signed up for the PigTRACE program, which tracks hog movement around Canada.

Fynn said Manitoba Pork has reached out to members on that list. It’s more difficult, however, to pinpoint new farms or people who raise a few pigs at a time for personal use.

A Manitoba Pork spokesperson told the Co-operator they connected with Direct Farm Manitoba, which represents smaller-scale farmers, and passed on a link to a webinar on swine health.

Fynn also said he had spoken with the Manitoba Veterinary Association, and was trying to communicate with the Animal Nutrition Association of Canada to get handouts in stores that sell bagged feed to pig owners.

The Manitoba Co-operator spoke with two smaller-scale, but commercial, hog farmers about what animal health looks like on their farms, along with their concerns about foreign animal diseases like ASF.

Both have raised pigs for many years and direct market pork. They both participate in PigTRACE.

Zinn Farms

Andreas Zinn, who runs Zinn Farms with his family, raises about 300 Berkshire hogs, including sows and gilts, near Springstein. His family also raises meat chickens, laying hens, beef cattle and rabbits.

His market animals live on pasture in the summer, Zinn said. He puts his sows on pasture during gestation, but they live in the barn while they’re with boars, or with their piglets.

The market pigs are moved every day so they get fresh grass, don’t root up the pasture too badly, and don’t live in their own feces.

Zinn said that while he’s concerned with bio­security, his first priority is animal health.

“In my mind, whether you’re an animal or a human, the best thing you can do to prevent yourself from getting sick is just generally living and being a healthy pig or a healthy person,” he said.

A vigorous pig is better able to resist disease, he said.

He said this means giving the pigs a “low-stress” life. They live in large pens when inside the barn, and they don’t use gestation or farrowing crates. Wooden walls, straw on the ground and many windows to let in sunlight make the barns more comfortable to lie in, Zinn said.

Unlike a large, conventional hog operation, workers on the farm don’t shower or change clothes when they move between the pigs and Zinn’s other animals. They will change boots between species — most of the time — and have designated boots for trips to the abattoir.

If pigs get sick, they may disinfect the pen or keep it empty for an extended period. They treat animals with medication on an as-needed basis.

Zinn told the Co-operator that in his experience, if piglets get scours, the sow can usually get them healthy on her own. They’ve never had to treat piglets for diarrhea.

The farm is largely a closed system, rarely bringing in animals from the outside. When they do bring in new genetics, Zinn said he only buys them from farms where he knows the farmer has a similar management style to his and produces vigorous pigs with little dependence on medication.

There’s no known wild pig activity in his area.

“I’m not saying the way we raise our animals makes us immune to getting those diseases, but it’s not really a thing that’s — it’s not on the forefront of my mind,” Zinn said.

The Smith farm

Ian Smith raises between 200 and 250 pigs, including sows and gilts, near Argyle. He also raises registered shorthorn cattle for beef and breeding stock, and keeps about 80 laying hens.

His sows live outside, with access to the outdoors year round if the weather allows. His market pigs live inside an “old-school” barn built in 1969.

Smith spreads fresh straw twice per day, and the pens are scraped into the gutter every day — the barn doesn’t have the pit system common to modern, conventional barns.

“I don’t cut corners and I don’t feed any medicated feed,” Smith said, adding he follows industry codes, is CQA (Canadian Quality Assurance program) certified, and maintains biosecurity measures.

“I feel my biosecurity is better than any hog operation in the province because I haven’t brought a pig into this farm for eight or nine years,” Smith said.

He uses artificial insemination for breeding and keeps his own gilts.

When pigs are outdoors, they’re within an electric fence. Smith said he’s never had issues with wild animals entering the pens and there is no sign of wild pigs in his area. He’s the only worker on the farm, so outsiders aren’t entering the barn.

He makes his own feed. The pigs don’t eat table scraps, Smith said.

When Smith takes pigs to the abattoir near Beausejour, he said he uses plastic boot covers and cleans the trailer.

Smith said he’s “big time” concerned that the pork sector will be laid low by ASF but is less concerned about his own farm.

“This could be disastrous,” he said, “but in my situation with me being so small, maybe I have a bit of an advantage because I have my own customers.”

Assuming pigs are healthy, Smith said he’ll be able to have them slaughtered and will be able to serve his customers.

“I’m not trying to tell people that my system is the best system and the only system,” Smith said. “I’m just saying that my dad always said, ‘if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.’”

The post Small-scale farmers important for ASF prevention: Manitoba Pork appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

StatsCan on Monday reported 11.2 million cattle on Canadian farms at Jan, 1, 2021 — down one per cent from the year-earlier date and 25.3 per cent off the herd’s last peak at Jan. 1, 2005. The herd was spread across 71,330 farms, down 1.8 per cent from Jan. 1, 2020.

The overall cattle count takes into account a 1.7 decrease in the herd in Western Canada, to 8.2 million head, as well as a 0.9 per cent increase in the East, to 2.9 million head.

The calf count on Jan. 1 was down 1.1 per cent on the year at 3.7 million head, including a 3.5 per cent drop in births over the July-to-December period compared to the same stretch in 2019. Feeder heifers were down 4.5 per cent and steers 4.2 per cent on the year.

Total slaughter of cattle and calves from July through December 2020 was up 0.6 per cent from the same stretch in 2019. In 2020, StatsCan said, “processing plants adapted their operations to increase processing capacity and reduce existing backlogs.”

The cattle slaughter pace in 2020 ran notably higher during the summer months, which “typically experience seasonal slowdowns.”

Canada’s exports of cattle and calves, at 303,000 head, were down two per cent in the latter half of 2020 compared to the year-earlier period, as U.S. processing plants also ran up against backlogs of slaughter cattle due to COVID-19.

StatsCan said the Canadian dairy herd has remained “fairly stable” since the start of 2018, sitting at 1.4 million cows and heifers as of Jan. 1, 2021.

Hogs

As of Jan. 1 this year, Canada’s hog herd was reported at 14 million head, up 0.4 per cent from Jan. 1, 2020 and 11.2 per cent from a decade earlier, StatsCan said. The herd was spread across 7,575 farms, down 0.8 per cent.

Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba had the largest hog inventories as of Jan. 1 with Quebec at 4.3 million, Ontario at 3.7 million and Manitoba at 3.3 million.

Canadian farms reported 1.2 million sows and gilts, up one per cent on the year, while the number of boars remained “virtually unchanged,” StatsCan said.

Slaughter over the July-to-December period of 2020, at 11.5 million head, was up 4.2 per cent on the year, reaching its highest level since Jan. 1, 2005. Exports during that period ran at 2.8 million hogs, up 10.1 per cent from the year-earlier period, on demand from the U.S. for weaner pigs and higher export demand for pork, particularly from China.

Sheep

Flocks of sheep and lambs in Canada as of Jan. 1 this year were at their lowest inventory levels since Jan. 1, 1999, StatsCan said. At 780,200 head, the sheep herd was down two per cent from the same point in 2020.

The sheep breeding herd fell one per cent year-over-year to 580,800 head, mainly on reductions in the number of ewes and rams. The number of market lambs fell 4.8 per cent over 2020, to 199,400 head, while lamb slaughter rose 2.6 per cent, to 336,200 head.

Exports of sheep and lambs fell to 3,100 head during 2020, while imports of live animals totalled 8,400 head, the highest level for the Jan. 1 date since 2015, StatsCan said. –– Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Alberta Pork, the province’s hog producer commission, and the provincial government on Tuesday announced an outbreak of the viral disease at what was described as a “400-head hog operation.”

Javier Bahamon, quality assurance and production manager for Alberta Pork, told Alberta Farmer on Tuesday that the outbreak was discovered last Thursday (Jan. 3) on a farrow-to-finish operation and was reported to the provincial ag department by a private veterinarian.

The barn in question has been “contained,” he said, and other producers in the area have been notified. No other information was immediately available Tuesday on the general location of the property.

The porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDv) is a coronavirus which, once introduced in a herd, causes vomiting, watery diarrhea and dehydration in infected animals. Mortality rates run up to 100 per cent in infected nursing-age piglets but are much lower in growing hogs, which generally present with milder diarrhea.

Alberta Pork emphasized in a release Tuesday the disease poses no risk to people or other animals and pork products remain safe for consumption.

The provincial ag ministry said in a separate statement it doesn’t expect to see any “market access implications” for Alberta hogs or pork as a result of the new finding.

All that said, “any sudden onset of unusual diarrhea should be investigated immediately by a veterinarian,” the province said.

PEDv is known to spread via the “fecal-oral” route, most commonly through infected feces coming onto farms on “various surfaces” that can carry and transmit the virus, Alberta Pork said.

Biosecurity protocols are of “utmost importance” to curb further impact, Alberta Pork said. “It is especially critical during this outbreak that producers consider enhancing biosecurity on-farm and in animal transportation.”

Producers “are encouraged to submit all swine manifests, including farm-to-farm movements, in a timely manner” and off-farm destinations such as abattoirs “should be considered as a potential source for bringing disease to your herd.”

Alberta had guarded its PED-free status since before the disease first appeared in the Canadian hog herd, on a hog farm in southern Ontario in early 2014. The disease was confirmed in the U.S. in May 2013 and Alberta declared PED a provincially reportable disease the following Jan. 20.

Alberta’s surveillance turned up an environmental sample of PEDv in an “office space” at a hog handling facility later that fall, but the disease hadn’t appeared in hogs anywhere in Alberta until now.

Since the disease’s first appearance there, Ontario has confirmed outbreaks at 117 hog farms, most recently on Dec. 20, 2018 at a farrow-to-weaning operation in Perth County.

PEDv also turned up in hogs in Manitoba in 2014 and has appeared in 107 on-farm outbreaks in Manitoba, nearly all in the province’s southeast, most recently at a finisher barn on Dec. 28, 2018.

Quebec has reported 16 outbreaks since 2014, most recently in the Centre-du-Quebec region in April 2015 but mainly in the Monteregie. Prince Edward Island reported one outbreak in 2015. Saskatchewan has turned up environmental samples of PEDv, but no cases in hogs to date. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

The post PEDv arrives in Alberta hogs appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The 18 piglets and two sows were rescued after an electrical fault set hay on fire at a farm in Milton Lilbourne, 110 km west of London, in February.

And when the pigs were slaughtered, farmer Rachel Rivers said it was appropriate to give the firefighters some of the sausages to show her appreciation.

“I’m sure vegetarians will hate this,” Rivers told the BBC, explaining that farming was her way of life.

“I wanted to thank them. I promised them at the time I’d bring down some sausages for them, which they were all pleased about.”

A spokesman for the fire service said the sausages were “fantastic” and thanked Rivers for her generosity.

— Reporting for Reuters by Alistair Smout.

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• Read more: Investigators tracking PED infections

The pork council has released the following recommendations to increase biosecurity in the affected region:

Producers are encouraged to:

• Park all staff vehicles at the end of the driveway and wear dedicated footwear or plastic booties in the yard.
• Only allow essential service providers to visit the site, and insist they park at the end of the driveway and wear booties in the yard.
• Push all garbage and dead stock pick-ups to the end of the driveway (if not already in effect) and away from where barn personnel and visitors will park.
• Consider liming the driveways between the parking area and the barn – enough space to ensure all livestock and feed trucks entering the yard will get at least a full tire rotation’s worth of coverage.

Service providers are encouraged to:

• Schedule visits within the area for the end of the week, if possible, or at least for last of the day, followed by a cleaning and disinfection procedure.
• If necessary to visit a site, park at the end of the driveway, put on plastic booties when exiting the vehicle, and remove the booties when returning to the vehicle.
• Minimize the amount of site contact to the essential service areas, only getting out of your vehicle when necessary.

The post Ramping up roadblocks for PED appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The country’s outstanding record on controlling the porcine epidemic diarrhea virus has a host of lessons for the cattle sector, says a swine veterinarian who was deeply involved in Alberta’s battle against PEDv.

Start with the fact that everyone got on board, Dr. Egan Brockhoff told attendees at Livestock Gentec’s field day here.

“Almost every single pork producer in Canada took part in a national biosecurity training program and was audited,” said Brockhoff, a swine veterinarian with Prairie Swine Health Services.

“That’s never happened before in the world. There’s never been a case where every single farmer who owned pigs participated.”

This sort of co-operation was spread across the entire sector.

“Canada was quite fortunate because we had the Canadian Swine Health board that was dedicated to nothing other than keeping the health of the Canadian pork industry at the top in the world,” he said. “That was its job, and it had huge co-operation across the country.”

The numbers tell the story.

In the U.S., the virus, which kills piglets and severely weakens sows, spread like wildfire — infecting thousands of farms and killing eight million pigs. Based on the relative size of its hog sector, Canada should have had about 1,000 cases. But the total is just 109.

And a fifth of those came right at the start of the crisis in January 2014, when the virus showed up at 20 Ontario farms in a short period. All turned out to have purchased feed tainted with infected porcine plasma from the same feed mill.

“That’s not the first time this has happened in the Canadian livestock industry,” said Brockhoff. “But the lesson learned is, ‘How often do we talk about feed biosecurity?’”

The No. 1 risk

That wasn’t the only question being asked, Brockhoff told the field day attendees at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Lacombe research station.

“The risk factors are something that we started to identify early on. This is where I ask you to think about your own industry: How can you mitigate risk factors?”

The single biggest thing you can do to lower risk is to be cautious when purchasing new animals.

“That is the absolute king,” said Brockhoff. “You go out, buy a new animal, bring it to your farm and what it has, you now have. And vice versa. That’s a No. 1 risk.”

So what does being cautious mean?

For Brockhoff’s clients that means having him call the vet of the producer who is selling pigs. The two vets will talk about health and herd compatibility and if there’s any risk, the sale doesn’t happen and the pigs don’t move.

Another huge change is transport biosecurity.

Brockhoff, who grew up on a large feedlot and cow-calf operation in central Alberta, has never seen a cattle liner that’s been properly washed, dried and disinfected in his 40-plus years.

But that’s the standard in the hog sector even though “it takes a lot of work to wash out every pork livestock trailer in Canada and the United States.”

“Canada produces nearly 30 million pigs, the U.S. nearly 10 times that. There are more swine transports on the road than any thing else in the North American livestock industry and we’re trying to make sure we wash every single one of them.”

Canada is fortunate because it uses fresh water in truck washes because recycling water (which is done in the U.S.) helps spread viruses and bacteria. But even then, washing and disinfecting can’t completely eliminate viruses. So thermal-assist drying is recommended — which means putting a trailer inside a building heated to 35 C for at least 90 minutes. In Alberta, there’s now a new mobile baking unit for trailers that heats the trailer’s surfaces to 70 C. While baking the viruses effectively kills them, freezing has no impact.

“Only when you clean, wash, disinfect, and dry these transports do you make them virus free or as close to that as possible,” said Brockhoff.

The washing of livestock transports in the pork industry is now audited.

A surprising danger

But it’s not just the big and obvious sources of potential contamination that have come under scrutiny.

“The smartphone has become one of our greatest disease-carrying agents. There was a super-cool study published in the U.K. a couple of years ago… 25 per cent of the cellphones sampled from people who lived in the city of London had fecal material on the surface.

“Those are Londoners, so I don’t know what that means. But for those of you who work with livestock routinely, I’m going to guess those numbers are even higher, if you’re hanging out with livestock all the time.”

One of the big things that helped prevent the spread of PEDv was communication across the sector. The Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network, which monitors data on pig health, was key and so were education initiatives.

But the two most vital things were having the right attitude and being determined to do whatever it took to fight PEDv, he said.

“Of the 109 sites that have been affected in Canada with PEDv, about half of them are now negative,” said Brockhoff. “We are going to kick this virus out of Canada. It’s endemic to the U.S. and will be there for a long time but in Canada, we expect to have this virus gone.”

The post Standing tall: How Canada’s pork sector survived the attack of a killer virus appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

“They’re seeing high mortality rates, in the order of 70 to 80 per cent in some cases,” said Andrew Dickson, general manager of the Manitoba Pork Council. “In the feeders barns, they’ve noticed it because it’s hurt production a bit… whereas in the sow barns, they’re noticing mortality.”

Some of the affected barns have seen death rates among piglets approaching 100 per cent, he added. Others have been lower.

Chief veterinary officer Megan Bergman confirmed the province’s fifth on-farm case of porcine epidemic diarrhea last week after receiving a report by the herd veterinarian as is required by provincial regulation. PEDv is a reportable disease in Manitoba. The province’s veterinary lab later verified the findings.

How the virus arrived at this nursery finisher barn, which is located outside the five-km buffer zone containing the two previously confirmed cases, remains a mystery.

“What we don’t understand is why the outbreak occurred,” said Dickson, adding it will take time to track down where all the animals from the farm went to as well.

“We’re in the pretty early stages of the investigation, and right now we are following up on all of our leads in terms of movement on and off the farm and direct and indirect contact,” Bergman said.

But she added it’s not surprising that new cases of the virus are emerging at this time of year, noting the virus prefers cool, wet weather.

It’s here

This fact, combined with the knowledge that eight high-traffic or environmental sites have also tested positive for PED in the province, make it absolutely crucial that producers remain vigilant when it comes to biosecurity measures, the chief vet said.

“We need to continue to remember that we do have the virus in Manitoba, so the biggest piece we need to emphasize is that biosecurity is our best friend and we need to continue to be very vigilant in our practices, because that’s the best way we can keep it out of our barns,” Bergman said. “Know who is coming onto your farm, know where they were before coming onto your farm, and ensure that they haven’t had any exposure to high-traffic sites… or another barn, or an assembly yard, and these are all pieces that are important.”

That means making sure any visitors — from trades people such as electricians or carpenters, to couriers, to family and friends — follow strict biosecurity protocols, she said.

“You could be located somewhere with a dozen hog barns in the area, but everybody practises super-high biosecurity and… you’re perfectly safe,” said Dickson.

Meticulous attention

That means meticulous attention to wearing booties, washing vehicles, drying vehicles, not travelling between assembly yards and barns — the kind of measures that can be difficult to maintain on an ongoing basis.

“Industry gets busy, they’re trying to move animals, they’re marketing, and sometimes you forget. So our responsibility is to continue to remind folks,” said Bergman. “Farmers need to be stopping people at the farm gate, seeing where they have been and telling them what needs to be done.”

Veterinarians have observed producer lapses in following these protocols, Dickson said.

“Put on booties before you get out of that truck at an assembly yard… don’t get out in your boots, tramp around all over the place and then get back in the truck. I’ll be frank, pig farmers have been identified as doing this by veterinarians,” said Dickson.

Getting rid of the virus isn’t easy, he added. And an encounter with porcine epidemic diarrhea isn’t cheap.

Dickson said in addition to mortality, sows that have had the virus are difficult to sell and disinfecting a barn could cost in excess of $30,000.

However, while the cost to producers is high, Dickson said it is important to remind people that porcine epidemic diarrhea presents no public health risk.

“This is not something that affects humans,” Dickson said.

The post High mortality in latest PEDv outbreak appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

As their counterparts south of the border and in Eastern Canada haul dead piglets out of their barns by the wheelbarrow, the industry here is getting $90-$100 per head for isoweans and up to $135 for 40-pound piglets.

With a provincial average of 28 piglets per sow per year, that makes keeping a sow nowadays almost three times more profitable than a beef cow, even with calf prices at the current record highs.

But that lasts for only as long as the industry here can keep it out of production facilities.

James Hofer of Starlite Colony fears Manitoba’s luck will run out sooner rather than later unless small abattoirs and assembly yards act quickly to tighten up their biosecurity.

Surveillance

At a meeting last week hosted by EMF (formerly Eastman Feeds) and feed additive giant Alltech, Hofer cited the latest results of environmental surveillance by Manitoba’s chief veterinary office that have found a total of eight swabs taken from high-traffic areas that were PED positive.

“My question is how does it get there?” said Hofer, noting that so far none of the tracebacks by the CVO from those operations have led back to PED-positive farms in Manitoba.

“We should be standing up to them and saying that if you’re accepting unwashed trucks at your facility, we’re not supporting your business anymore.”

Given the high profits that can be gained from “staying clean” and the devastating consequences of bringing the virus back onto the farm, a sow operation would be better off shooting cull sows at home than bringing them to a location where PED is present, added Hofer.

Weanling producers have good reason to be concerned, said Dr. Peter Provis, of Elanco Animal Health.

• More from the Manitoba Co-operator: PEDV found in hogs on second SE Manitoba farm

Contaminated

He cited a study that found 20 per cent of the trailers arriving at U.S. killing plants were contaminated with PED. That finding wasn’t particularly surprising, he said, given the extent of the outbreak.

But what shocked researchers was their discovery that 11 per cent of the trailers deemed clean at arrival were found to be contaminated with PED by the time they had left the plant.

That makes cleaning and drying trailers critical for halting PED, and last winter’s brutally cold weather made that task especially difficult.

“You can’t disinfect shit. So you have to get rid of the shit. If you don’t get rid of the shit, you can’t get rid of the virus,” said Provis.

The fact that Manitoba and the western provinces haven’t “broken” is a source of amazement for many, especially in the U.S. where thousands of farms have lost an estimated seven million pigs.

That’s because even just a speck — a millilitre — of infected piglet feces contains a billion viruses, and only six are needed to make a pig come down with the disease that is 100 per cent fatal in newborn piglets.

Highly infectious

One gram of PED virus — that’s about the size of a pencil eraser — diluted in two large swimming pools will result in water capable of infecting a pig, he added.

“There’s not many viruses that we know of that are that infectious,” said Provis.

The PED virus is so insidious — it can persist in fecal slurry at room temperature for two to four weeks and withstand anywhere from -20 C to 40 C – that some of his colleagues in the United States have come to regard it as an “evil spirit” that spreads on the wind.

There may be some truth to that, he noted, because studies have shown that if a barn is more than three miles away from an infected premises, it has no more chance of getting infected than if it were hundreds of miles away.

“If you’re downwind, you’re more likely to get it than if you’re upwind,” said Provis, who added if PED does become established here, spreading manure will become problematic.

Unlike bird flu, which can jump from birds, hogs or humans and back, and other Corona viruses such as MERS and SARS, which are deadly to humans, PED can only infect pigs.

That means it can only spread by hitching a ride on boots, fingernails or on the feet of birds, flies or vermin.

Plasma

In the early stages of the outbreak in Canada, feed made from a single lot of porcine plasma was the only identified common link between the first 18 infected farms.

But for the American industry at this point, it is “academic” whether the initial source of infection was contaminated feed or some other vector, said Roger Kinsey of Iowa-based U.S. Feeds, who gave a disturbing overview of the horrific losses seen by pig farmers down south.

Virtually all feed companies have pulled the plasma product out of piglet starter feeds as a precaution, but now, with an estimated 200 new farms getting infected every week, there’s enough of the virus present to sustain the carnage even without feed as a potential vector.

“I think it’s a safe product if it’s processed properly, but you know, things can happen,” said Kinsey.

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