Alberta PED Outbreak Limited to One Farm

January 30, 2019 — 

All evidence indicates the first Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea outbreak in Alberta has been contained to a single farm. On January 7th the first case of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea in Alberta was reported on a 400 sow farrow to finish operation. Dr. Julia Keenliside, a veterinary epidemiologist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development, says there are multiple routs through which PED can enter a farm and in this case a number of possibilities have been ruled out and the cause has been narrowed down to several possibilities. [Source: Farmscape.ca, 1/30/19, by Bruce Cochrane]

Clip-Dr. Julia Keenliside-Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development:
"There has been a lot of testing done throughout the industry and all of the contacts with this farm and so there have been no other cases identified and there's no evidence of spread. The producer acted quickly to voluntarily stop movement and enhance their biosecurity and we are very thankful for that. The producer has been continuing to work closely with their herd vet to keep their biocontainment very tight and we have not seen any evidence of further spread. We're continuing ongoing monitoring in collaboration with Alberta Pork as well as all high traffic pig sites in Alberta. They've been very cooperative and supportive and this includes slaughter plants, assembly yards and some truck washes and there has not been any PED detected at any of these sites so far since this outbreak happened. However, people should always remember that even though we do have negative test results it's possible that there is some contamination there and people should remember that we should be treating all high traffic pig sites as potentially contaminated."

Dr. Keenliside encourages producers to continue to evaluate all farm inputs for potential risk of bringing in disease, including trucks, equipment, feed, staff, live animals and all high traffic pig sites, even though they're testing as negative, should be considered as potentially contaminated.

To listen to the complete interview, click here.