The general manager of Manitoba Pork Council is confident new protocols for washing trucks and trailers returning to Canada that deliver pigs to farms in the United States will help contain the spread of PED. Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea has now been confirmed in Ontario, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island. Manitoba Pork Council general manager Andrew Dickson notes, last Thursday, Canadian Border Services and CFIA amended the regulations for trucks and trailers returning from the United States that have gone on farm to deliver pigs.
Clip- Andrew Dickson-Manitoba Pork Council:
"When they come back they either have to be washed and disinfected in the United States and meet the standard that’ll be expected by the inspector at the border or B, if they just do a scrape and get most of the material off in the United States but they haven’t been washed and disinfected then they will come to the border, they will be sealed and they will go to a designated washing station where they will be washed and disinfected following the standards laid out by the Canadian Swine Health Board. The trailers will be sealed with a plastic tag with a unique number and they will be unsealed and a record kept at the wash station, a CFIA inspector will check the wash stations and collect the tags and match the numbers with the trucks and trailers that arrived at the border point. Trucks and trailers that deliver pigs to processing plants in the United States, all they have to do when they come back is to be scraped but our hope is that those truck tractors and trailers will be washed and disinfected like the other trailers."
Dickson stresses, even though we have a case in Manitoba, we can contain this disease if we are vigorous in how we proceed with maintaining very high levels of biosecurity at the border, at packing plants and assembly yards and in particular on the farm.
Source: Farmscape.Ca, February 19, 2014 by Bruce Cochrane.