Alberta Pork to Release PED Biocontainment Plan

October 21, 2015 — 

Alberta Pork expects to begin circulating a new PED biocontainment plan to the province's pork producers and veterinarians within the next 2 to 3 weeks. In response to the risk posed by Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea, Alberta Pork is developing a biocontainment plan that would be tailored for each farm and triggered in the event PED is identified. [Source: Farmscape.ca for October 2, 2015]

Javier Bahamon, the quality assurance coordinator with Alberta Pork, says biosecurity is the first line of defense in stopping diseases before they enter the farm but, if a barn does become infected, how are we going to deal with those diseases and that's where biocontainment comes in.

Clip-Javier Bahamon-Alberta Pork:

The components are very simple steps. It is a plan that each herd veterinarian develops with the managers and owners of the barn to contain the disease. You will need to start to think about contact information and people that you want to be involved with when these cases happen. For example Alberta Pork and the herd veterinarian will be the first ones to be informed of the issue in the barn and second, how we are going to start the investigation and after start the communication process with other farms that can be infected by this. We will start to communicate with the different people that works with that herd so they it is feed, is it genetics, garbage pick-up, veterinarians, personal, manure haulers, pig transporters and others that are involved in the everyday operation of the barns. We will contact them and then we will develop the plan on how they can reach the farm and how we can contain that disease within the barn and not get contaminated to the other herds.

Bahamon expects the plan to be ready for circulation to pork producers and veterinarians across the province within the next two to three weeks with full adoption to occur over the next year.