Manitoba’s Chief Veterinary Officer says steps are being taken to clean and disinfect the three Manitoba swine farms that have been infected by Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea as quickly as possible. Since May 26th three Manitoba swine farms, including two sow barns and one finisher operation, have been confirmed infected by Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea. These are first cases reported in Western Canada in over 18 months. Dr. Megan Bergman, Manitoba’s Chief Veterinary Officer, says the main focus right now is to contain the outbreak and steps are being taken to clean up the infected farms. [Source: Farmscape.ca, June 22, 2016 by Bruce Cochran]
Clip-Dr. Megan Bergman-Manitoba Agriculture:
Producers work very closely with their private veterinarians as well as the office of the CVO in order to undertake a very thorough cleaning and disinfection process for their sites. Generally the CVO’s office will also conduct surveillance testing after the cleaning and disinfection has been done to ensure that the virus has been eliminated from the environment.
The challenges that these folks are presented with is, if you have a finisher operation you are able to empty out the barn at different points in your production which means it’s a little bit easier for you to undertake a cleaning and disinfection process. When you’re dealing with a sow barn, often times you have animals that remain within the barn so you need to work around those animals to be able clean the facility so it takes a little bit more time but it’s certainly doable. In our previous experience it’s been anywhere from one to two months to get things fully clean and up to negative status.
Depending on the nature of the operation and the timing has to be able to get things done so some of them are able to be a little faster and some may take a little bit longer.
Dr. Bergman says good biosecurity continues to be critical for both transporters and for farms. She recommends all truckers returning from the U.S. to clean and disinfect their vehicles upon returning to Canada so we can minimize the level of virus transmission that may be occurring from contact with high traffic pig sites in the U.S. and that producers enhance all their biosecurity practices on farm and when visiting high traffic sites so they don’t take anything back to their farms.