Over the past month three Manitoba swine farms have been confirmed infected by Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea.

Dr Megan Bergman, Manitoba's Chief Veterinary Officer, says the main focus right now is to contain and eradicate the outbreak.

Dr Megan Bergman-Manitoba Agriculture:

The CVO Office works really closely with the affected producers, their private veterinarians as well as industry stakeholders to evaluate all movements on and off of affected farms.

That way we can try to identify what the potential source of that virus may have been onto that farm but also prevent any movement of the virus off the farm or detect rapidly if there has been some transmission to other sites.

Really the number one line of defense is enhanced biosecurity so all of the producers in the area have been notified of the affected farms and are enhancing their biosecurity on farm.

In addition the CVO's office is working with the affected farms and their private veterinarians to conduct surveillance of all farms that have been in contact with the affected farms.

At this time we don't have anything to pinpoint the source of the infection.

This one is a little bit complicated.

As in many cases there are multiple factors that may have contributed to the outbreak and it's sometimes not possible to pinpoint any one source.

We do know that all of the three farms have the same strain of the virus and this is also the same strain that's been identified in Ontario as well as the U.S.

But it will take us some time to get through all of the detail of our epidemiological investigation so it may take several weeks or months for us to be able to come up with a report of what we think may have happened.

Dr Bergman applauds the producers, their private vets and industry stakeholders who have been working collaboratively with her office on the response.

She says the ability to collaborate allows transmission from the affected farms to be minimized as much as possible.