Now it’s official.
Tom Vilsack, United States Secretary for Agriculture, has
made it mandatory to report all outbreaks of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus.
He has also made it mandatory to track the
movement of pigs, vehicles and other equipment leaving affected premises.
Movements would still be allowed.
The agency also is helping affected producers
with disease surveillance, herd monitoring and epidemiological and technical
support.
The government is also offering loans to
farmers who need to restructure their finances because they have been hit by an
outbreak of PED.
The U.S. moves go beyond anything that’s
currently required in any province in Canada.
Several, including Ontario, Quebec and
Manitoba, require mandatory reporting of PED outbreaks, but none requires
quarantines, eradication measures or tracking of the movement of pigs, trucks
or people that have been on a farm experiencing PED.
Ontario’s chief veterinary officer has
criticized the hog producers and truckers who have not been doing a thorough
job of cleaning, washing, disinfecting and drying vehicles where there has been
exposure to PED.
He is also clearly blaming Grand Valley Fortifiers,
the feed company in Cambridge, that used dried blood plasma from the United
States as an ingredient in baby pig rations for the original 17 outbreaks
of PED in Ontario, beginning in
late January. He did not name Grand Valley Fortifiers.
The company stopped using the blood plasma and
immediately and notified its customers when it learned that its rations might be
the source of PED outbreaks.
Since then the toll has climbed to more than 50
outbreaks in Ontario, including a number of finishing barns that sourced their
pigs from infected barns.
There has been one outbreak each in Manitoba,
Quebec and Prince Edward Island.
In the U.S., there have been 5,790 outbreaks
across 30 states in the United States, claiming the lives of more than five
million piglets.
