PRRS a threat Expert urges hog producers to be mindful of biosafety and guard against disease that leads to high abortion losses
Manitoba is an island of calm in the often-stormy seas of North American hog production.
However, it needs to keep biosafety barriers high in case the province gets hit by one of the “tsunami strains” of PRRS that are common in the U.S. Midwest and Eastern Canada.
“You are in a fortunate position,” said swine veterinary expert Walter Heuser, a former Steinbach-area vet who now lives in Montreal.
“Let’s not have this happen to us.”
Heuser, who works for Pfizer Animal Health, said most prairie producers have been blessed with weak strains of PRRS.
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The disease is a problem that prairie farmers have often had to grapple with, but they do not suffer anywhere near the devastation faced by farmers in Ontario and Quebec.
“I was flabbergasted,” Heuser said about some of the abortion rates suffered by Ontario farmers with some of their local strains of the viral disease.
Abortion losses of more than 50 percent can commonly occur with outbreaks of new strains.
Death losses in nursery pigs can be 12 to 15 percent, compared to pre-outbreak rates of three to four percent.
“I’m sure that is something not a single one of you has dealt with,” Heuser said at a Manitoba Pork Council fall meeting.
“That’s what Eastern Canada deals with on a common basis.”
He said the risk to prairie farmers isn’t from Eastern Canada, which has little pig-flow connection to the West, but rather trucks that move pigs between the Prairies and U.S. Midwest.
Truck-cleaning methods offer some protection, but the present money losses in hog production might be weakening those measures.
“The industry is tight for cash. We’re looking at ways to save money. I would suggest that some corners have been cut,” said Heuser.
Farmers should be reviewing their biosafety rules and ensuring they and their employees are taking them seriously.
“Go back through the basics.”
Years of dealing with endemic PRRS has made it an old subject, and the lack of virulence of prairie strains might have made farmers unafraid of new infections.
However, the experience of producers outside the Prairies, where devastating losses can happen year after year as new strains arrive, prove the importance of biosecurity before an outbreak of one of these nasty strains occurs.
“We are talking about PRRS strains that are completely different,” said Heuser.
“It is something that has to be taken really, really seriously.”
