Ontario veterinarians skeptical of product billed as a cure for PED

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

by JIM ALGIE

Minnesota-based manure treatment developer Bill Lashmett wants to recruit farmers willing to test a new product he says can kill porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PED) in pigs, although two leading Ontario veterinarians are skeptical about the product.

Lashmett is principal of Embarrass, Mn. firms Farm For Profit and B&S Research and has long marketed a biological “manure pit liquefier” and other similar products in both the United States and Canada. In an online article posted to the company’s website and in a recent telephone interview with Better Farming, Lashmett said his new product, B & S Solutions, “has the ability to kill the PED virus in pigs.”

He recommended farmers use it in small quantities as a feed additive for expectant sows and young pigs.

The company’s statement refers to University of Minnesota research as well as live animal tests on weaned nursery pigs it claims were conducted by a veterinarian at a Minnesota veterinary clinic. "We are so encouraged that we at B&S Research are seeking hog producers who are experiencing new or reoccurring PEDV infections in order to conduct further testing," the company’s statement says.

However, Lashmett could not identify the veterinarian except by a given name and calls to the clinic failed to bring a response. A receptionist at the clinic was unfamiliar with the research and an emailed inquiry to one of the firm’s vets went unreturned.

Sagar Goyal, a professor in veterinary population medicine at the University of Minnesota researcher confirmed in an email to Robert Friendship, a professor in the department of population medicine at the University of Guelph Ontario Veterinary College, that he conducted PED tests using B & S products but only in contaminated manure and not on living animals. He said he found that they did reduce PED virus in swine slurry after 24 hours.

Goyal noted in an email to Better Farming that Lashmett had sponsored the research.

Neither Friendship, who specializes in swine population health issues, nor Ontario government swine veterinary specialist Tim Blackwell had heard of the product when contacted last week by Better Farming. Both expressed skepticism about Lashmett’s claims after reviewing the company’s published article.

Friendship noted that any product "given orally to a pig would have to go to the federal drugs directorate" and there is strict federal regulation of medicinal products governing labelling. Lashmett’s firms and products do not appear to be included on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s web-based registration listings of animal feeds and additives.

Meanwhile, pressure from the virus in Ontario has slowly eased, Friendship said, Thursday. He credits conventional strategies for disease control and the hard work and hygiene of farmers, truckers and other swine handlers to block spread of the disease.

Provincial government records indicate 76 confirmed cases of PED in 14 Ontario municipalities with the most recent report, Mar. 23, 2015, in Elgin County. The first case of PED in Ontario was confirmed Jan. 22, 2014. Friendship referred to “a handful of new cases this winter” as evidence that the outbreak has diminished.

Lashmett is a retired hog farmer and chemist whose biological products have been used mainly to reduce soil toxins and to break down manure.

“When this PED thing came out, I said we can kill that,” Lashmett said in an interview. “We’ve killed every other kind of scours in livestock; I don’t know why we can’t kill this one,” he said.

Lashmett declined to identify the product’s active ingredients except to say it is composed of “naturally occurring organisms we put together that match one another, that will clean up solid manure waste and put it into a liquid form, get rid of flies, get rid of odour.” Asked what is the product, Lashmett said, “if you think I’m going to tell you that you’re mistaken. We do this research for 25 years then everybody wants to know what it is.”

Asked why he thought the product works, he said, “What it does, we haven’t found any chemical or combination of hydrocarbons it won’t break down.”

Friendship, however, said it’s one thing to break down viruses in a manure pit, quite another to do it in living pigs.

“We don’t have very many anti-viral products that you can give to live pigs and have it kill virus,” Friendship said in an interview, Thursday. “We don’t have many of those in human medicine let alone veterinary medicine,” he said.

“If we had a product that would kill it in the blood stream that would be wonderful,” Friendship said. In the absence of such a product, the professor advised farmers to rely on widely-used hygiene and separation tactics to isolate pigs from the virus.

Ontario government swine specialist Tim Blackwell said in an email he is “not aware of any effective treatment for PED.” Referred to the B&S website, Blackwell emailed back that he couldn’t evaluate the product based on the relatively sparse information provided.

Friendship warned against claims of “a quick and easy solution because there isn’t one.” Major concerns with PED occur among suckling pigs. In weaned animals, the infection “is generally not fatal,” Friendship said.

He noted that first Canadian reports of the disease in January of 2014 resulted from a “point source” in contaminated, dried plasma product delivered to several Ontario farms. Twenty of these farms later “broke with PED,” he said.

“Last spring at about this time, there was a fair number of farms affected,” Friendship said. The summer of 2014 showed “virtually no outbreaks.” Subsequent winter conditions produced a “handful of new cases,” he said.

“A lot of herds that were positive last year have been cleaned up and very few new herds have broken,” Friendship said, describing current trends as “all good news.” Current circumstances “reflect increased biosecurity, attention to trucking and getting trucks clean and being careful about pig movement.”

Although there are no vaccines licensed in Canada for PED, the federal government has allowed imports. Vaccine is used mainly in cases of persistent infection, Friendship said.

“It is hard work and it’s a real battle and it’s a tribute to the farmers who have been able to push it out of their farms,” he said. As well, Friendship urged farmers to use caution moving manure from infected premises during cool, damp conditions this spring.

“There is a danger when you’re spreading manure that virus will survive out there as long as it’s cold and wet,” he said. “As soon as we get hot and dry weather it will be killed off,” he said of the PED virus. “It will not survive sunlight and warm weather,” Friendship said. BF