Farmscape for October 7, 2020

The Manager of Swine Health Programs with Manitoba Pork credits a dramatic reduction in the number of cases of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea to enhanced biosecurity.
Since 2014, when PED was first identified in Manitoba, annual numbers of cases have varied, peaking at 82 last year before falling to three so far this year.
Jenelle Hamblin, the Manager of Swine Health Programs with Manitoba Pork, says many factors have contributed to the reduction, primarily heightened biosecurity.

Clip-Jenelle Hamblin-Manitoba Pork:
We've continued to learn and to enhance our biosecurity, being that one of the risk factors that continued to come about from 2017 and then again in 2019 was on-farm biosecurity breaches, so really analysing that farm level biosecurity and tightening that up where ever possible.
Then also throughout the sector.
We've had increased biosecurity in our transport sector, we've had organised and planned manure applications as that was considered a risk and I would be remiss if I didn't mention anything about the reduced people movement that we saw this spring.
In 2020, when COVID hit back in March, we saw a lot less traffic in general, not only on-farm traffic but people traffic.
Did that reduction in movement make a difference?
I don't know if we'll ever be able to quantify that but certainly it's something that's been tossed around as a potentially contributing factor.
Another factor, for the spring more so, and something that's been implemented on many farms, especially in 2019, is that of dust control, so putting down a dust control product in your controlled access zone and on your lane coming up to your farm to really try to keep those dust levels, those dust particles down where that virus could potentially be blown around or blown in.

Hamblin says the strongest message at this point would be that farm level, premises level biosecurity and how you're interacting when you step onto that controlled access zone and when you come into the barn.
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Bruce Cochrane.

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