“Starting the plan ahead of potential new cases will help farmers implement the preventative measures included [in] the plan and allow us to broadly discuss the plan with producers and industry service providers,” the farm group wrote in an Oct. 18 newsletter.

Why it matters: Industry has said that the every-other-year PED cycle in Manitoba is not sustainable.

Manitoba has suffered successive PED crises since 2017. That year, the province went from a handful of cases since it was found in 2014, to 80 in 2017 alone. That was followed by another record-breaking outbreak in 2019, when 82 infections were confirmed.

That same year, an analysis run by MNP, based on 2019 market numbers, suggested that an outbreak on a Hutterite colony would translate to a financial hit of about $187,400, or $468 per sow, on a 400-head farrow-to-finish operation.

Most of 2021 looked like it might break the cycle. No cases were found in early summer, when previous outbreaks had surged. Those hopes were dashed in October. Fall cases would again be the worst PED outbreak on record. By the time it petered out a year later, 132 sites had been infected.

That outbreak was noted for its unusual timing. The cold months had heralded the tail end of past outbreaks, but cases spiked through the winter of 2021-22.

Faced with a repeating pattern, the pork council promised a PED elimination plan early last year. A working group was set up to investigate strategies in other regions and develop an approach that would work for Manitoba. Producers got a first look at the plan in November 2022.

The framework

In June of this year, Manitoba Pork unveiled the finished framework.

The elimination plan aims to see infections cut in half year-over-year and, by 2027, erase 96 per cent of infections in the high-risk area of southeastern Manitoba.

That region saw the province’s first cases back in 2014 and has been the worst hit in every outbreak.

Other goals include better biosecurity in general, having barns spend less time infected and a gradual drop of PED-infected manure storage.

“The potential risk of PED remains high from environmental sources such as manure application for many years after a premises is infected. This risk is amplified following a large-scale PED outbreak,” the text of the plan reads.

The plan includes outlines for biosecurity, controlled animal movement, traffic control, surveillance, containment and rapid and aggressive response, including humane depopulation.

“As much as possible,” pigs in the high-risk zone should not leave the region until slaughter, “and pre-movement testing should be done when moving one site to another as outlined by the surveillance plan,” the document states.

If there is an infection, no animals come off the site for four weeks, exempting shipments needed for animal welfare or, if in some cases, they are considered low risk. Those exceptions will be granted case by case with collaboration from Manitoba’s Chief Veterinary Officer, the plan reads.

If five or more barns test positive within five kilometres, all farms in that radius will be tested weekly.

Infected sow barns will aim for a six-week gap in production, while farrow operations have a target of four to six weeks.

“Herd immunity against PED will be enhanced through backfeeding of infected material, and subsequent sow vaccination,” the plan says.

Farrow-to-finish operations will have a similar six-week goal, no shipments off the site for five weeks after backfeeding and no movements except for direct-to-slaughter for eight weeks.

The plan notes that new vaccines are being developed in the U.S. and trials are happening in Canada.

Battening the hatches

The pork industry is expecting the next PED wave in 2024.

With the elimination plan in place, the council hopes to cap that outbreak at 65 cases and cut it shorter than what was seen in past problem years.

For the rest of 2023, Manitoba Pork’s short-term strategy is to spread as much information about the plan as possible to producers in the high-risk zone.

The producer group wants farmers in that range to know, in detail, how the plan is being rolled out, the prevention that sites should have in place and what their farm’s role will be if there is a PED confirmation in the area.

Producers are asked to discuss the elimination framework with their veterinarians and develop plans for prevention and intervention on their individual farms.

The post PED elimination plan takes the gloves off appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

In fact the province says it could easily be on par with 2017, the province’s worst year.

On June 18, Dr. Glen Duizer of Manitoba’s Chief Veterinary Office (CVO) said 2019 cases were comparable to the same point in time in 2017. There had been 41 reported cases by the end of June 2017, rising to 80 — eight times more than the previous three years combined — by the end of 2017.

There are now over 40 cases this year, as of June 24, according to Manitoba Pork. The latest available number from the province was 36 cases, as of June 18.

Manitoba saw a relative lull last year in PEDv following the 2017 outbreak. Only 16 cases were confirmed in 2018.

Why it matters: Before 2017, Manitoba saw five or fewer cases of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDv), a disease that can kill 80 to 100 per cent of piglets less than a week old. Two years ago, those annual cases jumped to 80, and this year might be shaping up much the same.

Anxiety has risen with news that the virus has crossed west of the Red River. Four cases had been reported in south-central Manitoba as of June 21.

Two cases were also confirmed west of the Red River in 2017, both were later linked to direct animal movement from an infected barn in the east. Western cases this year did not have such a link, a fact that the Manitoba Pork Council has noted with concern.

“It leads us to question how it would have got there,” said Jenelle Hamblin, Manitoba Pork Council manager of swine health programs. “This virus is quite elusive and we haven’t been able to pinpoint a lot as to how it’s moving.”

Producers did try and reduce day-to-day transport following the 2017 outbreak, she said, although that risk is difficult to eliminate, since the pork production system requires regular movement.

Residual immunity has somewhat buffered piglet loss compared to 2017, Duizer said, although losses in naive barns have been severe. About 60 per cent of infected barns this year were previously infected, the province reports.

“It is by no means protective for the entire herd,” he said. “But it does seem to limit the impact a certain degree, and that obviously wanes over time. The problem with the residual immunity is that it’s not preventive of the disease, it just seems to limit the impact, especially in some of the older piglets.”

Reinfection is not necessarily a sign of biosecurity gaps, he added. Manure from 2017 remains a possible chink in a barn’s defence, even after the virus has disappeared from the herd. The province estimates that residual risk from manure might last at least two years, although the exact window is unknown.

“There certainly could be risk factors that they maybe didn’t fully address last time around, but in many cases you’re also looking at larger farms in swine-dense areas and those in themselves are risk factors,” he said.

Both HyLife Foods and Maple Leaf Foods are currently battling the virus.

Eight HyLife Foods barns had tested positive for PEDv as of June 19, company founder Claude Vielfaure said.

“Since (the) first PED showed up in Manitoba a few years ago, we’ve obviously looked very, very closely to our biosecurity controls and tried to improve them over the years and this virus is a bit of a mystery on how it spreads,” he said. “It’s a tough one.”

The company is looking for further improvements and extra biosecurity measures, he said.

The company has acquired additional hogs from other barns in Manitoba and Saskatchewan due to potential loss.

Maple Leaf Foods did not reveal how many of its barns were infected, but did confirm the virus’s presence in its facilities.

“All major systems and some independent farms have had cases of the virus including Maple Leaf Foods,” the company said over email. “All producers in Manitoba are following stringent biosecurity protocols. However, weather and windy conditions driving aerosol spread via dust is definitely a factor in this year’s PEDv cases.”

Long shadow of 2017

The CVO believes this year’s outbreak is still spillover from 2017, rather than a new source of infection from out of province, Duizer said. Hamblin pointed to sequencing work being done to verify current PEDv strains and confirm where the continued infections are coming from.

Veterinarians and the sector as a whole hope to get a better idea of how risk factors from 2017 might come into play today, she said, including things like area spread, manure application, and how far the virus might move without human help.

The virus has been dismayingly tenacious, Duizer noted, and 2017 carry-over has already proven more vigorous than many assumed at the end of the outbreak two years ago.

“It has surprised us and I think it’s surprised not just us with the CVO. It’s surprised the herd veterinarians. It’s surprised the sector itself,” he said. “When we look particularly at the southeast, we didn’t expect the impacts to be lasting this long.”

The CVO has little idea of how long Manitoba’s pork sector might be fighting the aftermath 2017, although Duizer says his office is devoting much effort to answer that question.

“Right now, what we can say is that it’s definitely more than a couple of years, that’s obvious if we look back at 2017,” he said. “How long that’s going to be… do I think it’s going to be a decade? No. But do I think that it’s going to be a longer-term control and eradication strategy that’s going to have to deal with multifactorial components across, in particular, the swine-dense area in southeastern Manitoba? Yes.”

The post Another 2017 for PEDv? appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

About 79 per cent of those producers have signed on with the council’s Manitoba Co-ordinated Disease Response program (MCDR). The online information-sharing platform includes information on biosecurity, manure spreading and outbreak status, including the location of infected premises.

Producers can access the platform’s information after signing a confidentiality agreement.

“They provide their information to the platform as well,” the council’s manager of swine health programs, Jenelle Hamblin, said. “It’s definitely been a beneficial tool to quickly get disease information out to producers who are currently fighting the virus.”

The program was launched in 2017 during a major outbreak. The council eventually expanded the program from the southeast, the current hotbed for the virus, to the rest of the province in the hopes of improving general disease response outside of PEDv.

As of June 21, about 53 per cent of all hog farmers in Manitoba were signed on with the program.

The council has seen more farmers sign on since 2019 PEDv reports began to come in, Hamblin said.

The pork council is working with herd veterinarians and Manitoba Agriculture on disease tracking, as well as promoting biosecurity and engaging with service providers (one infection vector identified in 2017) as this year’s outbreak continues.

“Each premise needs to work with its herd veterinarian, being that each premise is a little bit different and works in a different way,” Hamblin said.

The post Manitoba Pork pushing online disease response program as PEDv cases climb appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The proof-of-concept algorithm has potential for use in real-time prediction of other disease outbreaks in food animals.

PEDv is a virus that causes high mortality rates in preweaned piglets. The virus emerged in the U.S. in 2013 and by 2014 had infected approximately 50 per cent of breeding herds. PEDv is transmitted by contact with contaminated fecal matter.

Gustavo Machado, assistant professor of population health and pathobiology at NC State and corresponding author of a paper describing the work, used machine-learning techniques to create an algorithm capable of predicting PEDv outbreaks in space and time.

Machado, with colleagues from the University of Minnesota and Brazil’s Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, used weekly farm-level incidence data from sow farms to create the model. The data included all pig movement types, hog density, and environmental and weather factors such as vegetation, wind speed, temperature and precipitation.

The researchers looked at “neighbourhoods” that were defined as a 10-kilometre radius around sow farms. They fed the model information about outbreaks, animal movements into each neighbourhood and the environmental characteristics inside each neighbourhood. Ultimately, their model was able to predict PEDv outbreaks with approximately 80 per cent accuracy.

The most important risk factor for predicting PEDv spread was pig movement into and through the 10-km neighbourhood.

The post Researchers create algorithm to predict PEDv outbreaks appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Biocontainment procedures were immediately put on the site where the virus was detected, while Manitoba Pork and the Chief Veterinary Office recommended all premises heighten biosecurity in a large swath of southeastern Manitoba.

That area is defined by a western boundary of Hwy. 75, north by PR 210, east by Hwy. 12, and south by Hwy. 52 (and mile road 36N that continues west from 52 to 200 and the Red River).

This area has been impacted by PED in May and June of the past three years.

These roadways were chosen to provide well-defined boundaries for all involved to be vigilant, said Jenelle Hamblin, Manitoba Pork Council (MPC) swine health manager.

“Those roadways provide a physical reminder for people in the area to enhance their biosecurity because the risk is still there,” she said.

Manitoba Pork issued an advisory just before the long weekend notifying all producers to consult their veterinarian on enhanced biosecurity protocols for implementing on their specific premises.

• Read more: Pork sector mixed victories and challenges in 2017
• Read more: Pork sector learns biosecurity lessons from PEDv

“The main message we’ve been giving is to work closely with the veterinarian to develop the protocols, because every site is set up differently and functions differently,” Hamblin said.

“The biggest thing is working with your veterinarian to develop those biosecurity protocols that work best for your operation.”

Procedures include controlled access zones and limiting the site traffic to essential service providers. Parking vehicles well away from the barn and implementing physical barriers in the barn to remind staff of shoe and glove changes are also recommended preventive actions.

PEDv is both “frustrating and scary” but producers do need to remember the risk remains and to analyze that risk in everything they’re doing, Hamblin said, adding that means very close attention to everything coming into the barn, who is entering the barn and the practices while working with the animals.

“This virus is tricky,” she said. “It moves on many different things and we have found that it has been able to breach through when premises are practising strong biosecurity.

“We do have to remain vigilant with every single thing we do. It’s something we have to keep in mind with every practice and everything that’s happening on the premises. Sometimes that can be hard to remember in things we normally do. It can just take one slip when we’re dealing with an outbreak in the barn.”

Related to 2017’s outbreak, there are 68 premises that have reached presumptive negative status, meaning the affected producer has implemented strict measures to eliminate PED from all pigs and pig contact areas and has confirmed the virus has been eliminated through repeated animal and environmental testing.

Eleven premises remain transitional and one positive site remains.

Manitoba’s hog producers have been dealing with incidents of PED since a first confirmed case in February of 2014. The sector was hit especially hard in 2017, when 80 barns tested positive.

The events of last year served to rivet producers’ attention on the need for tightened biosecurity and to pay very close attention to movements on and off farm.

“The main message would be to continue that heightened biosecurity if you haven’t already put it in place,” Hamblin said.

Upon confirmation of last week’s case, the barn was closed immediately and all biocontainment measures put into effect to prevent the spread of the disease.

PED causes severe dehydration and diarrhea in pigs, and usually kills young animals although older animals can recover. It is not transmitted to humans or other animals and is not a food safety risk.

All producers are being urged to sign on to the password-protected Manitoba Coordinated Disease Response (MCDR) online to access detailed information regarding statuses and locations of affected premises.

To arrange to sign a producer confidentiality/information sharing agreement to access MCDR, or for other assistance, contact Hamblin at jhamb lin@manitobapork.com or 204-235-4442.

The post New case of PEDv confirmed May 15 appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The pork sector was rocked in the east this year, with 80 barns testing positive for PEDv, including the first cases west of the Red River. Before 2017, Manitoba reported 10 cases of PEDv, a disease that kills 80-100 per cent of naive weanlings and causes dehydration and sickness in older animals.

The outbreak gave MPC a crash course on the state of biosecurity in the province, MPC swine health programs manager Jenelle Hamblin said. At the same time, the sometimes alarming spread of the disease, “really brought biosecurity to the forefront of people’s headspace,” in the affected area, she said.

The result was tightened biosecurity and more attention to movements on and off farm. Service providers set up their own biosecurity policies and the sector as a whole was on high alert for potential disease entry points at facilities throughout the value chain.

“We had producers talking to their veterinarians and making biosecurity plans and implementing them on farm,” Hamblin said. “Some of them needed strengthening, others had some in place — had biosecurity plans in place.”

CVO assessments

Manitoba’s Chief Veterinary Office turned an evaluating eye to biosecurity in the wake of the outbreak. The CVO did 41 assembly yard assessments, 17 wash station assessments and 27 processing plant assessments.

It found that out of 27 observed shipments to the processing plant, 10 drivers made contact with the loading dock and eight out of the 10 did not change their footwear when stepping into the trailer. Out of all drivers just 12 changed footwear when entering the trailer.

At assembly yards, seven of the 41 trucks had more than one person inside. Four times the passenger got out and half of those extra people leaving the truck did not protect the cab for biosecurity when they did.

When it came to scrape-out, 11 out of 31 observed drivers at assembly yards and 12 of 22 at the processing plant did not change their boots.

Wash station assessments showed none of the 17 observed trucks used soap or degreaser when washing down.

On the brighter side, all organic matter was gone by the time trucks were disinfected. Eleven of the trucks were disinfected on site and “most others” followed suit at the truck’s home base. All trucks were allowed to dry before being used again, the report added.

A snapshot

Those results should be taken with caution and should not be confused with a scientific study, Glen Duizer, CVO veterinarian, warned.

The assessments are a snapshot in time and a different day may have returned different results, he warned. Both Duizer and Hamblin also stressed that no link was made between what was observed and PEDv spread.

Despite those caveats, Duizer says he took away several lessons from the results.

There is a “decent percentage” of drivers who have adopted national policy on swine transport biosecurity, he said.

“It looks like there is a level of concern and interest when we are in an outbreak situation to make sure that those types of standards are being followed when we are delivering to high-traffic sites,” he said.

Duizer noted the need for temporary measures during outbreaks, biosecurity that goes over and above usual recommendations.

“Essentially, the disease is out there,” he said. “It’s at a higher concentration, a higher level in particular areas. It might be time to have a set of steps or procedures that are temporarily implemented in order to prevent the spread of disease.”

Every facility should have a plan for such “wartime” biosecurity, according to Duizer.

“Will that need to be done on spots like high-traffic sites? Maybe, but it is something that we should at least be considering,” he said.

Avoid the office

MPC wants to see less contact between drivers and the inside of facilities where they are delivering pigs. Those contacts are tagged as one way a virus might jump facilities.

CVO assessments found 23 of 27 observed drivers at the processing plant entered the facility or made contact with the plant office.

“We’ve noted that, in particular, some of the high-traffic sites had already made changes to make it so drivers don’t walk into the office, don’t need to go into the office, yet in some cases drivers still choose to do so,” Duizer said.

Given that, he added, it’s time to look for other motivations drivers might have for entering the office, as well as any logistical changes to make sure drivers have no need to access the inside of the facility.

Biosecurity was more contained at assembly yards. Only 15 of 41 observed drivers made contact with the loading dock or the inside of the facility, although 12 of the 15 who touched the dock also did not change footwear to enter the trailer.

George Matheson, Manitoba Pork Council chair, called the assessment data “very informative.”

“What seems like common sense, obvious things in regards to biosecurity, are not always being followed,” he said. “So hey, make producers aware of these little things — having the same boots in an assembly yard and wearing them back into your truck — is not a good idea. These are just simple habits that people have to develop and we will develop them over time and we’ll increase biosecurity.”

Moving forward

The PEDv outbreak has cooled since its peaks in June and July. No new cases have been reported since Oct. 24.

The shift has left producers pondering the future of biosecurity on their farms and which outbreak measures should be carried forward or relaxed.

Dave Hildebrandt, general manager for Morris Piglets, near Lowe Farm, was among those bumping up biosecurity after brushing a PEDv buffer zone. The CVO placed a five-mile buffer zone around all infected barns.

“Basically, we laid out all our normal biosecurity for entering the barn which was already in place, all the shower-in procedure, etc., and then we set up further biosecurity for entering onto our farm site,” he said.

Some of those measures included limed approaches, a closer watch on trailer disinfection and drying, employee parking on driveways rather than on the yard and more strict footwear policy.

“They actually left all of their outer footwear outside of that limed area and changed into boots and then walked across the limed area and across the barn yard and then entered the barn building itself, and then still followed our barn entry protocol for entering the barn,” he said.

Added to that, he asked employees to avoid roads where transports from the infected farm were most likely to travel.

The lime protocol fell by the wayside once the nearby PEDv threat had dimmed, he said.

Personalized

The line between “wartime” and “peacetime” biosecurity will be highly individual and guided by day-to-day operation, Hamblin said.

“The standards and the principles are all similar, but specific plans on farm and in service areas for service providers, they’re tailored to specific production types and flows and production mechanisms,” she said, noting that producers should turn to their veterinarian for help developing a plan.

Biosecurity should remain high as a matter of course, the pork council says, particularly over the winter and into spring 2018.

Looking forward, Hamblin says she plans to extend the Manitoba Coordinated Disease Response, a network of pork producers and veterinarians that the council says will spread information faster in another outbreak situation.

The network has focused on PEDv so far, although Hamblin says she expects to spread the program into western Manitoba, an area untouched by PEDv, and shift focus to include PRRS.

The post Pork sector learns biosecurity lessons from PEDv appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

She was joining the organization as its swine health program manager in the midst of an outbreak of the porcine disease PEDv, a situation that’s roiled the pork sector throughout North America in recent years.

• Read more: Expanded staff to put hog disease in the crosshairs
• Read more: Manitoba Pork turns to producer-based program to stem PEDv outbreak

“The predominant efforts have been managing the current outbreak,” Hamblin told the Co-operator, “but in that response we are looking at the current biosecurity protocols that the industry has in place across the board.”

MPC announced the position in midsummer, at the height of the now slowing porcine epidemic diarrhea (PEDv) outbreak in southeastern Manitoba.

The disease is devastating to young animals, causing up to 80-100 per cent mortality in suckling piglets, is infamously hard to get rid of and has been among the industry’s disease boogeymen since it first appeared in North America in 2013.

This year has been the worst PEDv year on record in Manitoba, with 79 cases as of Oct. 12, almost eight times more than the previous three years combined.

The outbreak prompted the Man­itoba Pork Council to ramp up disease management programming, both to take a hard look at existing policy and jump-start communication between farmers, veterinarians, MPC and other provincial and national disease management bodies.

Important move

Andrew Dickson, MPC general manager, said PEDv may have been what prompted the new animal health position, but added that it’s going to be a key building block in the coming years.

“We’ve been able to enhance the services for all of our producers to try and help them, to get them through this disease outbreak and we’re starting to build some programs and services helping producers to deal with further diseases that may eventually start to appear,” he said.

The pork council has been keeping a running record of on-farm and industry practices to identify what has been working and any gaps to address.

The Manitoba Coordinated Disease Response also falls under Hamblin’s mandate. The initiative was unveiled earlier this year as a way to connect farmers and veterinarians with disease management efforts. The program’s website was launched soon after, posting general notices, and the disease status of infected farms and resources.

Farmers have bought into the program, Hamblin said. As of Oct. 17, 70 per cent of pork producers in southeast Manitoba had signed on and agreements are still coming.

“We’ve had very positive feedback on the program,” she said. “Producers are accessing the information. Veterinarians are accessing the information regularly. We can kind of go behind the scenes from our website and take a peek on, ‘Is this being used?’ We were very happy to see that guys are logging in regularly and taking a look at the information that we’re putting up there for them to utilize.”

MPC hopes to eventually expand the program into other regions and to fight future disease threats.

“Moving forward, the approach that we’re taking toward PED in terms of disease management — we want to expand into other diseases such as PRSS and implement the same open communication style, working with multiple industry partners, the CVO’s office (Manitoba Chief Veterinary Officer), MPC, the herd veterinarians, to really tackle these diseases as a whole and work together as an industry to manage these diseases in the province,” Dickson said.

PRRS (porcine respiratory reproductive syndrome) causes infertility and “mummified piglets” as well as lung issues in adults and is another major disease threat to Canadian hogs.

PEDv update

Manitoba saw the first unexplained PEDv infection in over a month Oct. 12.

Two finisher barns tested positive for the virus on Sept. 5 and Sept. 15, both linked to animal movement when pigs were transferred from an infected farm.

In the latest case, the cause is unknown.

“There’s a lot of work going on right now to try and figure out what happened. We don’t know. It caught us off guard,” Dickson said.

Efforts to slow the disease are having an effect, he said, evidenced by the slowdown in new cases since July. He warned against relaxing biosecurity, however, as the outbreak is still ongoing.

Of the 79 cases, 32 are considered transitional, with no critically sick animals and certain groups no longer shedding the virus. Another eight are assumed presumptive negative, with no infected pigs, although the virus may still be lurking in manure storage.

The risk profile may change with the incoming cold. Dickson says fall and winter would ordinarily come with higher risk, with the cold and wet making it easier for the pathogen to get into barns.

It is unknown if that pattern will hold.

The outbreak in Manitoba has not mimicked outbreaks in other areas, according to Dickson.

“We’re starting to find all kinds of things about this disease that were relatively unknown,” he said. “We’re finding, for example, that there’s a high survival rate in some pigs, higher than expected.”

There has been more investigative work this year than in some previous Canadian cases, Dickson said.

The post Swine health hire highlights disease management appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Five unaffected barns recently had to receive pigs from locations battling the virus due to space constraints, Dr. Glen Duizer of Manitoba’s chief veterinary office said last week.

While the pigs being transferred to other facilities are no longer shedding the virus, officials are still worried the virus could follow them to new barns.

“We’re still very early with that, so it’s hard to say whether any of these will become positive down the road,” Duizer said. “They, themselves, are undergoing ongoing monitoring after receiving the pigs and we will, as much as possible, keep surveillance in place to follow up on how those premises are doing.”

So far, the sector has limited animal movements to other infected facilities when possible. If pigs must be shipped to uninfected barns, there has been effort to stay within the five-kilometre high-risk buffers already set up around each confirmed PEDv case.

The chief veterinary office requires animals to go 35 days without clinical signs and have two back-to-back negative tests before allowing transport. The office also hopes to determine the baseline status of Manitoba’s farms to boost confidence that animal movements will not result in further infection.

Duizer stressed that a non-shedding status does not mean the barn is presumed negative for PEDv. Rather, it indicates that shipped animals are recovered or come from immune sows, the barn has an elimination strategy underway and internal biosecurity is isolating any sections of the barn where the virus may still be lurking.

“That is a transitional status that is meant to give us an idea of what risks we need to mitigate and address when we move those pigs,” Duizer said, adding that the system may be revisited in light of the most recent cases, confirmed in late July and early August.

The chief veterinary office estimates it may take between four and six months for a barn to be completely cleared of the virus.

Packing plants

Over 30 pig shipments from PEDv-positive farms have arrived at two federal packing plants in Manitoba in the first two weeks of August, a practice previously avoided in fear of contaminating Manitoba facilities with the virus.

“Those shipments, again, as much as possible, we’re looking at having them reach a non-shedding status or, at minimum, having a negative test,” Duizer said. “They are still treated as if they are positive premises and we are making sure that we monitor the transports, the companies. The packing plants are ensuring that there’s biocontainment.”

Both plants have segregated those shipments from the rest of the processing chain. Animals are queued for the end of the day or end of the week to minimize contamination risk. Transport and unloading space has been set aside for the shipments, and facilities are minimizing interaction between movements from PEDv-positive farms and those from elsewhere in the province.

The chief veterinary office is monitoring both plants. Duizer said there was no evidence of contamination as the first week of shipments closed.

Animals were previously shipped to packing plants in the United States, where the virus is already common.

Two more cases

Manitoba got a respite from the ongoing outbreak in mid-July when no new cases appeared July 15 to 26. The streak ended July 27, when a finisher operation in southeast Manitoba was added to the list of PEDv-positive premises, followed by another five days later. PEDv infections in Manitoba sat at 62 this year as of press time. No new cases had been confirmed since Aug. 1.

But while the outbreak has seen its first case in August, Duizer says the most recent infections were due to purposeful animal movement and not breaches in biosecurity.

“I think one of the things we want to reinforce on success is that when we’ve seen farms implement an aggressive outbreak-based biosecurity response, and I’m not saying that those need to be implemented 24-7 for the rest of the farm’s life or the rest of the premise’s life, but because there’s an outbreak in the area, their willingness to implement (those) kind of aggressive short-term biosecurity changes to protocols has appeared to be effective,” he said.

The highly contagious PEDv causes dehydration and has been known to kill between 80 and 100 per cent of infected sucklings while older animals will often recover.

The post Recovering pigs being moved to other barns appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Dr. Volker Gerdts, associate director of research at VIDO-InterVac and one of the lead researchers on the project, says the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) approved the vaccine for testing under real-world outbreak conditions. Vaccine has been shipped to one producer in southeast Manitoba as a result.

“What we’re doing there is essentially assessing the vaccine in the field,” Gerdts said.

A similar trial took place in June 2016, when three barns in southeast Manitoba became infected.

The vaccine targets the four most common strains of PEDv found in North America, including those confirmed in Manitoba.

“It’s a vaccine for the sows; so you vaccinate the sows twice before they give birth to the piglets and then they’re passing on the immunity to the suckling piglet,” Gerdts said.

Immunity is passed through milk and colostrum, VIDO-InterVac told the Manitoba Co-operator in July 2015.

PEDv concern often centres around piglets as the disease may cause 80 to 100 per cent mortality in infant animals. As of 2016, it was estimated the disease had cost the North American pork industry over eight million pigs and $400 million since 2013.

• Read more: HogWatch calls for safer barns

VIDO-InterVac’s vaccine has been in development since late 2013, after the first U.S. outbreak caused large-scale losses south of the international border but before the first confirmed Canadian case in January 2014.

Gerdts and his team quickly completed an animal model for the disease and moved into animal trials. Several vaccine candidates were tested and a front-runner chosen for later trials. Within a year, Gerdts and his team had developed and tested the prospective vaccine.

“I guess it’s really a combination of us putting a lot of internal resources onto this project and then, also, being able because of our infrastructure to work with PEDv in high containment,” he said.

VIDO-InterVac’s location at the University of Saskatchewan features a 250,000-square-foot facility, one of the largest Level 2 and Level 3 containment research facilities in North America.

“We had the capacity to do a lot of these trials in parallel,” Gerdts said.

By December 2015, the CFIA had approved the vaccine for field testing and, in August 2016, VIDO-InterVac announced it had partnered with European company Huvepharma to commercialize it.

Huvepharma could not be reached for comment at the time of printing, but testing under commercial conditions is ongoing, according to the VIDO-InterVac website.

Gerdts says it is his hope that producers will be able to access the vaccine as soon as possible.

“It really depends on the regulatory authorities right now and also on our commercial partner who has now taken a licence to this vaccine and is commercializing it, which means they have to manufacture the vaccine and then get permission from the regulators to sell it in the U.S. and in Canada,” he said.

News of the potential PEDv buffer was welcomed by the pork sector. Andrew Dickson, Manitoba Pork Council general manager, says other vaccines against PEDv exist, but have met with mixed results.

“They haven’t proven totally effective and I’m not sure where the VIDO vaccine is at in terms of getting through the approval process,” he said. “There’s been some experimental trials with it on the farm to see how it’ll work under licence.”

The latest on-farm trial comes as Manitoba’s PEDv record soars to 30, with 20 reported this year alone.*

Six cases were confirmed in the space of four days in the second week of June. Two new cases were found June 6 within five kilometres of an already infected site, while a nursery operation outside of any existing disease area was confirmed June 7, the Manitoba Pork Council said. Seven more cases were confirmed June 8-14.

“Numerous situations have occurred within the recent outbreak in which service providers have entered a yard without barn personnel being aware and without procedures being followed to protect the disease-free status of the site,” the pork council reported June 7. “Manitoba Pork urges producers to control access into their yard and be in touch with every person entering the yard to ensure that biosecurity protocols are not breached.”

Biosecurity gaps were also noted during a June 2 call-in town hall.

*Article was updated to reflect the current number of PED cases reported.

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A finisher and sow barn were confirmed PED positive in the space of two days. Manitoba Pork Council general manager Andrew Dickson said finisher barn staff noticed symptoms May 14.

“That doesn’t mean every pig in the barn has got it at this moment in time, it just means some of the pigs got it, but it’s likely to spread,” Dickson said.

The pork council is acting on the assumption that the whole barn is infected.

“The question that then rises is it’s a feeder barn, so did the baby pigs that went into that barn, did they bring it in?” Dickson said.

Another case was confirmed in a nearby sow barn May 18.

Manitoba chief veterinary officer, Dr. Megan Bergman, was not available for comment, but previously told industry broadcast Farmscape that an investigation was underway into the source of the infections.

• Read more: Regional-level biosecurity urged against PED in Manitoba

Two sow operations and another finishing barn were previously confirmed positive for the disease on May 2, May 4 and May 8. All five cases lie within kilometres of each other, the province has said.

The newest report brings Manitoba’s PED cases to 15 since the virus was discovered in the province in 2014.

Losses are not known.

“With the feeder operations, what you tend to do is you get some sick pigs and you get some that don’t make it, but a chunk of them will get through it,” Dickson said.

The larger danger, he noted, was to young animals. The virus is known to cause up to 100 per cent mortality in suckling pigs.

Neighbours asked to monitor

Facilities that have been in contact or lie within five kilometres of infected farms have been asked to monitor for the disease. Testing is ongoing and the provincial Emergency Operations Centre has been active since initial reports of the outbreak. Infected locations have been revealed to veterinarians with clients in the five-kilometre bubble.

Sows in infected locations are being exposed to the virus to bolster immunity in the next generation, the pork council has said. All infected locations are under biocontainment and farm traffic is being strictly controlled.

The Manitoba Pork Council has released expanded biosecurity measures in reaction to the outbreak. Farms in the warning area are encouraged to limit traffic and erect signs or barriers to enforce the rule, wear approved footwear, restrict parking to driveways and roads off site, lime driveways and avoid vehicle contact with dead animals or garbage, which should have a designated pickup zone at the end of the driveway.

“We know there’s been good uptake on the biosecurity because we’ve got relatively few incidents of this disease compared to what we have in the United States or Ontario,” Dickson said.

Ontario broke 100 PED cases this spring while over 3,000 sites in the United States have tested positive for the virus between June 5, 2014 and April 27, 2017, according the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Manitoba Pork Council has stressed caution when visiting assembly yards and processing plants, which might house the virus, or when transporting animals to or from the United States.

“It’s really important that the trailers coming back be properly washed and disinfected in wash stations in Manitoba, even though they might have gone to a wash station in the United States,” Dickson said.

Language grew stronger after the most recent confirmed case.

“All producers within the area are strongly encouraged to ensure full compliance of their existing biosecurity protocols — every person, every time — and to contact their herd veterinarian about how to further enhance their protocols. Special focus should be devoted to personnel entry into the barn and load-out area biosecurity,” the pork council advised in its latest PED update.

Since information shared with the province is normally confidential, producers are also encouraged to sign waivers allowing veterinarians to share medical information with each other.

“It’s important that all the veterinarians in the province know what this disease is because you get a barn in southeast Manitoba supplying baby pigs to a barn in western Manitoba. The vets need to know what’s going on,” Dickson said.

All 15 locations where PED has been confirmed in Manitoba have submitted waivers, Dickson said.

The looming cleanup

Barns now face the prospect of disinfecting facilities once symptoms have abated.

“With the feeder barns, they’re going to have to move the animals out,” Dickson said. “They’ll probably have to be moved to the United States, but they have to wait until there’s no symptoms of the disease. For the sow barns, which produce the weanlings, you can’t ship the weanlings to the United States without a health certificate and that means that the animals have to be clear of the disease for 60 days, so that’s going to hinder their plans.”

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