Farmscape for February 3, 2011   (Episode 3518)

Manitoba's Chief Veterinary Office reports an outbreak of TGE last year provided an opportunity to test traceability protocols designed to protect the public from new and emerging animal diseases.

Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Initiatives' Chief Veterinary Office provides leadership and or support in addressing animal health, food safety and public health issues related to animals.

Last May the office became involved in an outbreak of Transmissible Gastroenteritis.

Animal health surveillance veterinarian Dr. Glen Duizer told those on hand yesterday for the 2011 Manitoba Swine Seminar  the outbreak was contained to three premises in two production units.

Clip-Dr. Glen Duizer-Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Initiatives:
I think we saw a production system veterinarian and the staff in that production system who acted very very quickly, implemented very significant biosecurity procedures and very rapidly implemented a control and eradication procedure and I think that had a huge role to play in it.

The herds involved were endemically or chronically infect mild coronavirus that is related to TGE and that probably contributed to their ability to fight off the disease.

Certainly we don't recommend that you get infected with any disease but in this case having a milder sister if you will of TGE probably assisted in preventing the disease from spreading.

The implications for other diseases from our perspective, from the CVO's perspective, we got to explore and see how a fairly mild disease could be well contained.

It allowed us to work through, without a real emergency hitting us, work through some of our capacity on doing traceability and notification and disease mapping and those types of activities that are important not just for the public but also for producers and their veterinarians.

Dr. Duizer concedes, while it's not possible to quantify how effective the rapid response was, it is reasonable to assume it had a significant impact.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       * Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council