The most pertinent swine disease issues in Manitoba are Porcine Epidemic Diarrhoea (PED) and Seneca Virus A.

Mark Fynn, the Manager of Quality Assurance and Animal Care Programs with Manitoba Pork, told the Organization's Fall Meetings last week, five new cases of PED have been confirmed on farm since May and Seneca Virus A, detected in Ontario, has resulted in eight truckloads of sows being rejected at the border.

Mark Fynn-Manitoba Pork:

In total we've had ten on farm cases of PEDv since we first got a case.

The first five are well dealt with but had five new cases this year.

Of those five cases this year one of them has gone to a presumptive negative status which means the pigs and all of the pig contact areas are testing negative. Another two of them are on their way.

They're in the testing phase and then the most recent two are biocontained and are in the process of cleaning up those sites to also get to that status.

With Seneca Virus A, the big concern there is that it looks a lot like foreign animal diseases such as Foot and Mouth Disease.

It's not a human health issue and it's not a food safety concern but, since it looks like this, it causes a big investigation by the CFIA to be launched so they can rule out those other foreign animal diseases that are a bigger issue.

Unfortunately that causes a stop on movement from those sites for up to three days and when you're dealing with sites that deal with a lot of animals going in and animals or product coming out it can cause quite a disruption to the industry.

Mr Fynn says the entire pork industry has ramped up biosecurity in response to PEDv and those same efforts, which include thorough cleaning and disinfection of swine transport vehicles, increased vigilance when travelling to assembly yards and heightened biosecurity on farm, will also reduce risk of exposure to Seneca Virus A.