Hog producers are now in the riskiest time of year for getting porcine epidemic diarrhea in their barns.
Canada has had 86 premises with the deadly disease in the slightly more than a year since the first case of PED was confirmed in the country.
Fifteen of them have occurred this winter.
PED virus travels in feces, and cold weather makes it more difficult to clean and disinfect trucks, boots and other surfaces on which it can move.
“After many months of things being very quiet, we can certainly see how the winter weather is making transport issues more and more difficult,” said Dr. Egan Brockhoff, a veterinarian with Prairie Swine Health Services in Red Deer.
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Quebec has had 10 new cases this winter, nine of them in finisher barns and one in a sow herd. PED can kill piglets within days, but its presence in finisher barns with older pigs can be easily overlooked, Brockhoff said.
“It’s super critical that if you see loose stools of any kind in those finisher barns, that a guy looks very closely at them.”
PED infection was discovered in the nine Quebec finisher barn cases only when the pigs were shipped to the processing plant and trailers were tested for the virus, said Brockhoff.
The longer PED goes undetected, the higher the risk it will spread to the sow unit or nursery. The virus is almost always fatal to piglets, but older animals generally survive.
“If you do see changes, even subtle changes in your finishers, it doesn’t hurt to get samples to your veterinarian and they will forward them on for you.”
Manitoba’s most recent case, which was confirmed Jan. 21, was also in a finisher barn.
Forty of the premises originally infected in Ontario have since tested negative, and the single case in Prince Edward Island is also negative, Brockhoff said.
British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Alberta have had no PED cases, which Dr. Julia Keenliside said is a source of wonder to American hog producers who have lost millions of piglets since the disease was first found there in April 2013.
“Americans for sure are just stunned that we don’t have this disease yet,” said Keenliside, a veterinary epidemiologist with Alberta Agriculture.
A testing program has analyzed more than 6,000 samples from livestock transport trucks, wash bays, assembly yards and abattoirs. There have been positive samples for both PED and swine delta corona virus, said Keenliside, but so far no pigs have been sick.
Trace-backs for the corona virus haven’t identified a source.
Keenliside said samples from sparrows and pigeons have tested positive for PED, but it is unclear what that might mean in terms of spread, so analysis is ongoing.
In the global picture,a case of PED was confirmed in Ukraine in December, raising worries about virus spread in Europe, said Brockhoff. Some 30,000 pigs may have died there, but details remain sketchy.
However, Europe has its eyes on Canada when it comes to control measures.
“The European authorities, the English pork industry, mainland European pork industry, they are referencing the Canadian experience all the time,” said Brockhoff, who has travelled extensively to examine and consult on swine disease.
“They’re working on the Canadian model of early identification and industry co-operation, and so certainly our success has been noticed globally.”
The U.S. is also seeing an increase in reported PED cases this winter, though not with the same intensity as last year, Brockhoff added. Thirty-three states have confirmed PED infection.
