Farmscape for February 15, 2019

Alberta Pork reports the cleanup of a 400 sow farrow to finish operation infected with Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea is moving forward.
On January 7th Alberta confirmed its first case of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea on a 400 sow farrow to finish operation.
Since then ongoing testing has shown the infection has been contained to one site and there has been no spread of the disease.
Javier Bahamon, the Manager of Quality Assurance and Production with Alberta Pork, says the cleanup of the affected site is well underway.

Clip-Javier Bahamon-Alberta Pork:
We have been testing the animals to look at the levels of bioshedding on those and after four weeks those have been lowering the amount of bioshedding which means that we can start our plans on the marketing.
The plans are ongoing.
We are going to send those pigs to markets where they can be slaughtered as safely as possible in terms of biosecurity and welfare.
We will send those to those different markets.
After that plan is completed the cleaning and disinfection inside of the farm will start.
That obviously belongs directly to the herd veterinarian to decide how they are going to do it.
We will provide support for that process too and we will continue to monitor and test on how good that is, trying to minimize the spreading of the disease as much as we can.
That is the main objective of all this work that we have been doing in combination with Alberta Agriculture.

Bahamon says time frames vary so a date for completion of the cleanup can't be specified but those plans have started and, depending on the weather they can change.
However, he says the process is unfolding in as safe a manner as possible and with the highest requirements for the safety of the people that are doing it and the safety of the pigs as well.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork