PigTrace Canada | The federally enforceable program is intended to help investigate outbreaks and prevent disease spread
A Manitoba veterinarian who has worked with two hog operations that tested positive for porcine epidemic diarrhea virus is vouching for Canada’s nascent pig traceability program.
“I’ll (give) a big plug for PigTrace for PED,” Brad Chappel, a veterinarian from Steinbach, Man., told the Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium in Saskatoon last week.
Since July, pork producers have been required to report the movement of pigs to PigTrace Canada.
The federally enforceable traceability program is intended to help officials investigate outbreaks and public health concerns and reduce the risk and transmission of diseases that threaten production, such as PED, which has killed millions of piglets in the United States.
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PED has also been found in more than 60 farms in Ontario, as well as Quebec, Prince Edward Island and four sites in Manitoba
One of the farms Chappel worked with had been submitting data to PigTrace.
Under the program, officials will conduct a trace back investigation after confirming a PED diagnosis. They’ll want to know who was on the farm and where they went. In the case of PED, trucks are known to be a vector for the virus.
The PigTrace program requires locations, times of departure and arrival, license plates, animal identification and the numbers of animals to be reported.
The requirements cover most pig movements: shipping and receiving, importing and exporting, slaughter and dead stock pickup.
“They were able to quickly spit out the listing of where all the semis have gone,” Chappel said in a later interview about the farm in question.
“It was very quick and efficient versus having to go back through your receipts from the trucking company, trying to understand the timeline. If it’s all been recorded once already, it’s very simple to pull that data.”
Initial participation in the new program has been positive, said PigTrace Canada manager Jeff Clark.
He said the program is receiving reports from all regions of the country and had recorded more than 177,500 movements as of last week, which is more than 8,800 per week.
Almost 8,000 premises have been registered with the program. More than 4,300 have begun reporting.
“That’s over half.… It’s not just people reporting once and saying, ‘that’s stupid,’ “ said Clark.
“It’s people doing it, which is en-couraging to see.”
Clark said most premises have begun reporting in Saskatchewan, but he has noticed a drop off in weekly movements.
He warned producers that enforcement is on the way.
“There’s no fine structure right now from (the Canadian Food Inspection Agency),” he said.
“I’ll put money on the table there will be one by this time next year. CFIA will start issuing fines. They’re already starting to issue letters of non-compliance.”
Chappell said the Manitoba farms on which PED was found are still working to eliminate the disease, which can linger in lagoons.
He credits stringent biosecurity protocols for minimizing the virus’s spread but said diligence will be needed over winter as the threat increases in cold weather.
“PED is a horrible disease, but if we can get all the people doing the basics on biosecurity right everyday, I think we’re good,” he said.
“We’ve done a good job keeping it out of farms already in Canada, so we can do it.”
