Last week the office of Manitoba's Chief Veterinary Officer confirmed an investigation related to a positive sample from a high traffic site has identified the province's second on-farm case of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus.

Follow up testing is being undertaken to determine whether any pigs on the farm have been infected.
MLMMI executive director John Carney says the virus has changed the management of swine manure.

John Carney-Manitoba Livestock Manure Management Initiative

We are assembling different resources, information about research that's been done and best management practices which we've put on our web site and we are endeavouring to help producers by being a go between for them and collaborating with the industry and trying to bring this information together to help our producers in Manitoba.

It's appropriate to rethink our existing practices in light of this game changing development.

Just as an example, let's say that you were doing manure planning for a production system or a large farm and maybe you had a number of farms to plan the manure application for.

If that were the case I would certainly start the equipment movement with the highest health farm where there's the least chance of the PED virus being in the herd and then I would move to farms downstream that may have a bit higher risk of having the virus.

I think it's just time to rethink the things that we're doing but I think we are doing things well.

This disease is well contained in Manitoba.

For a summary of best management practices or research that has been done visit the MLMMI web site at manure.mb.ca.