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36

Better Pork

February 2017

SWINE

HEALTH

ONTARIO

W

hen Porcine Epidemic

Diarrhea (PED) strikes, the

big question is whether to

focus on elimination. It’s costly, time-

consuming work to rid a barn of the

virus – but so is opting to “just live

with it,” as speakers on either side of

this decision told participants at Big

Bug Day 2016, an OPIC Swine Health

Board event.

When Smithfield Foods’ Midwest

region sow system of 16 farms –

53,000 commercial and 10,000 mul-

tiplication sows – broke with PED in

February 2014, the company decided

to bring in acclimated gilts.

They had additional breaks in De-

cember 2014 and December 2015, and

are now in an endemic PED situation,

said Dr. Whitney Lincoln, a company

veterinarian.

“After each break, it gets harder to

clean up each time,” she said. “It is

now a chronic situation; we’ve had it

for eight to 10 months.”

Lincoln attributes the company’s

endemic PED situation to various fac-

tors, including waning herd immunity

– the herd can only go about five to

six months before re-breaking with

the disease. Others factors include

larger farm sizes that offer more risk

points, on-site gilt exposure, high

employee turnover that hampers

biosecurity procedures and farrowing

barns that see negative pigs passing

by, or through, potentially positive

rooms.

“We’re just setting ourselves up for

failure by not getting rid of it,” she

said, adding PED impacts last long

beyond each actual break.

The company has seen a 12 per

cent increase in pre-wean mortality

due to chronic PED in that system,

and a USD$5 to $10 loss per market

hog due to higher feed conversion,

lower average daily gain, increased

mortality and higher sensitivity to

other pathogens.

Long-term sow performance is also

affected, including decreased udder

development, longer return to estrus

and higher stillborn rates.

Lincoln said Smithfield’s focus has

since switched to eliminating PED

and its farms in the system are now

provisionally negative.

The response was a different one

when a 2,500 head farrow-to-wean

Sunterra farm in Ontario broke with

PED in May 2016.

“Our culture is not to live with

bugs and virus,” explained Mark

Chambers, senior production manag-

er. “We wanted to contain this (break)

and not give it to anyone else and

decided elimination is what’s going to

happen.”

The company’s plan included

exposing all the sows, loading up on

gilts, and creating a two week farrow-

ing gap, followed by extensive clean

up and tightened biosecurity.

Sunterra’s biosecurity changes

included entrance barriers, lime,

lunch pass-throughs, new entrance

and protocol for supplies, relocation

of deadstock removal, elimination of

shuttle buses and construction of a

driver transfer platform. The company

found PED had arrived on-farm via

truck and an unwashed loading ramp.

The direct cost of the break to Sun-

To eliminate or not to eliminate

Consider the different approaches these North American swine companies followed. Regardless of

the choice you make, PED will cost you.

by LILIAN SCHAER for SWINE HEALTH ONTARIO

agnormark/iStock/Getty Images Plus photo

Swine Health Ontario has set a goal of eliminating

PED fromOntario swine farms by October 2017.