The Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network, an initiative of the Canadian Swine Health Board, provides a forum for swine veterinarians across Canada to share information with their counterparts on swine disease issues developing in their regions.

Dr Chris Byra, the manager of the Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network's management team, says data gathered through the quarterly teleconference held last month shows, for the most part, things are fairly calm.

Dr Chris Byra-Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network

We're through the winter and into the early part of spring and we didn't see any big spikes of any particular disease.

It was a little bit of Streptococcus suis and a few cases of Erysipelas are occurring where people have eliminated vaccination as a cost saving measure for example but nothing really dramatic.

We did hear about Brachyspira, the swine dysentery bug and there have been, 20 new farms have been identified as having Brachyspira but they're not the hyodysenteriae type, the type that is really severe.

The cases have been primarily in Alberta and Saskatchewan but in the last six months or so there have been cases in British Columbia, Manitoba and Ontario.

The clinical picture on the farms varies from almost no diarrhea to a few that are fairly significant but the number of farms has gradually been increasing in the prairies.

Dr Byra says the report generated from last month's teleconference is being circulated to swine practitioners and animal health specialists that work with swine diseases and a summary will be prepared over the next few weeks for distribution to producers.