Officials are looking into how the deadly pig virus porcine epidemic diarrhea found its way into an Ontario pig barn, the first positive case in Canada.
The source of the virus is still unknown, but investigators are retracing the activity of trucks, people and animals on the southwestern Ontario farm.
Douglas MacDougald of South West Ontario Veterinary Services said there is no short list of probable introductions of the virus.
“As of today and tomorrow we are marshalling resources and doing extensive visits and test and swabbing of where the market hogs went, the culls went, the dead stock, service people, vehicles and so on,” said MacDougald, who was at the Banff Pork Seminar when the outbreak occurred.
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MacDougald said everyone is working together to try and make the best decisions for the herd and the industry.
“I think there’s an awful lot of misconceptions about PED virus from obviously the manner and speed which it has spread in the U.S. We obviously really need to pay attention and continue to learn from the experience of our American counterparts, but the reality is it may be acting like a super virus, but folks, it’s not,” said MacDougald.
PED is now in 23 American states and has spread quickly through contaminated trucks.
PED has killed more than three million pigs in the U.S. since it was discovered nine months ago. It’s greatest impact is on young pigs and can have almost 100 percent mortality in young piglets.
The Middlesex County pig farmer noticed nausea and vomiting in his pigs early in the week and test results confirmed it two days later.
Ontario’s chief provincial veterinarian, Dr. Greg Douglas, said while numbers are changing, reports from inside the barn show that almost 80 to 90 percent of the young piglets have died in the 500-sow farrow to finish barn.
“There was rapid onset of vomiting diarrhea and mortality in very young piglets. It’s consistent with what we’ve seen in the U.S. with mortality. The reports that we have inside the barn is mortality in the very young piglets is approaching 80 to 90 percent,” said Douglas.
MacDougald said they would also follow the trail to dead stock locations where some of the pigs from the barn may have gone. A dead stock truck picked up pigs from the infected location Jan. 22 and went to eight locations before when the announcement was made the following day.
Claude Vielaure of Hylife, a vertically integrated pork operation, said he is very concerned about the disease.
“It scares me to death, obviously, like any other producer,” said Vielaure during the Banff Pork Seminar.
Darcy Fitzgerald, executive director of Alberta Pork, said the news has made Alberta producers extra vigilant.
“We just can’t afford to have this disease on our farm. We’ve just had to hard a time in the last five to seven years.”
