Two Weeks with No New PED Cases in Manitoba Cause for Optimism

Farmscape for July 31, 2017

New tools being used in Manitoba appear to be helping bring the spread of PED in the province under control.
Since the end of April almost 60 swine production sites in Manitoba have been confirmed infected with Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea.
On Thursday Manitoba Pork hosted a PED information session in Steinbach to update producers on the situation.
George Matheson, the Chair of Manitoba Pork, says there have been no new cases since July 14.

Clip-George Matheson-Manitoba Pork:
We're organizing a manure management group for the infected farms.
Of course equipment can become infected and we don't want a positive farm infecting a negative farm just by the transfer of manure equipment and spreading must be done soon.
Lagoons get full.
That's one approach we're taking.
Manitoba Pork has decided to employ a Swine Health Officer, a full time position, just to manage the situation with the help of the Manitoba CVO.
We've had three staff members, Mark Fynn, Arne Thorlacius and our General Manager Andrew Dickson who have been extremely busy for the last three months trying to get control of the situation.
We've decided that we need a new employee for this.
Also there has been a vaccine developed by VIDO out in Saskatchewan and it will be used on a trial basis.
It won't prevent it but it will reduce the symptoms and make things more manageable for an infected farm.
Those are three tools that we're using to get control of the situation.

Matheson says there have been no new cases in over two weeks and the hope is that we're looking at the start of a trend.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork

A New and More Virulent Hog Infection Invades Manitoba

Dr. Blaine Tully - Canadian Association of Swine Veterinarians

Farmscape for July 28, 2017 The President of the Canadian Association of Swine Veterinarians says swine veterinarian in Manitoba have stepped up their focus on addressing a new more virulent strain of Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome. A new more virulent strain of PRRS, a viral infection that affects pigs of all ages and stages of growth, has been identified in Manitoba. Dr. Blaine Tully, the President of the Canadian Association of Swine Veterinarians and a partner with Swine Health Professionals in Steinbach, says genetic sequencing to determine whether it's related to strains experienced in Manitoba or other parts of the country have shown that its kind of a lone wolf. Clip-Dr. Blaine Tully-Canadian Association of Swine Veterinarians: We have about 12 or 15 farms, the majority of which are in southeast Manitoba but we do know there's farms in the Interlake and out into central Manitoba that have been infected. At this point the swine veterinary community has joined together and is somewhat dovetailing in with our PED response and we're looking at doing a lot more epidemiological evaluation of farms that are infected with this new strain of PRRS, where they're located, how related the new strains are, because once PRRS infects a pig and starts replicating the nature of the virus is to mutate slightly each replication and so we get variations within strain families. So we're looking at relatedness of viruses by sites and trying to map out potential transmission routes or events. Dr. Tully says pork producers and the veterinary community have been in a heightened biosecurity awareness mode for many months due to PED and fortunately all of the safeguards being put in place to protect farms from PED apply to reducing the risk of introducing PRRS. For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.        *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork RELATED: "Mystery hog disease to become common on Prairies: vet"

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Thanks to climate change, forest fires will likely become more common and widespread in Canada.

Environmental Research Letters

Control fire -- NWT, Canada. (USDA Forest Service photo.) 

As summer weather becomes increasingly drier and warmer, the risks of forest fires increase and their manageability decreases. A new study has modelled the key forest fire factors in boreal forests within the framework of changing climate models, and the results aren't hopeful: future forest fires will likely rage stronger and be much more difficult to contain than ever before. Researchers looked at three main predicting factors in forest fires: forest fuel types (in other words, what burns up in a forest fire: species of trees in the forests, type of forest and shrub cover, presence of lichens, wood chips or mosses on the ground surface); weather scenarios for the next 80 years; and fire behaviour (how the fire will spread, how fast it will travel, how intense it is, etc.) Their findings showed that the proportion of days in fire seasons with the potential for unmanageable fire will increase across the Canada's forest, more than doubling in some regions in northern and eastern boreal forest.

FULL STORY HERE.