An outbreak of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea, first identified in the US in mid-May, has now spread to 18 states affecting an estimated 1,000 farms.

Canadian Swine Health Board chair, Florian Possberg, recalls in the early 2000's, Porcine Circovirus was the big factor that alerted the industry to the dangers of new and emerging diseases prompting Canada's agriculture minister to allocate funding to create programs too address the threat.

Florian Possberg - Canadian Swine Health Board

What that did is raised the level of awareness of what farmers could do on a preventive basis to keep disease out of their herds and a lot of our producers have taken that very serious.

There've changed a lot of their practices to better protect their swine herds against the intrusion of disease.

To date we think that has been part of the success story that we've enjoyed in Canada.

We certainly have producers that have learned lesson from Circovirus and are doing things like sanitizing trucks, being sure of the sources of any pigs coming on to their farms, visitor log books, change of cloths, just a whole number of things that producers are now doing that in many cases they weren't doing before to lessen the chance of disease invasion on their premises.

Mr Possberg notes, while PED has been spreading methodically through the United States, fortunately to date in Canada we have not identified any cases.

He says data submitted to the Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network by veterinarians attending Canadian swine farms indicates that so far we have managed to keep this vicious disease out of Canada.

You can visit our PMWS/PCVAD page by clicking here.