A positive test for swine delta coronavirus at an Alberta
hog-handling facility is “a shot across the bow” for pork producers, says
Alberta Pork president Frank Novak.
The virus was found at a site that has not been revealed,
but no sick pigs have turned up.
This coronavirus is a member of the same family at Porcine
Epidemic Diarrhea virus which has caused alarm across Canada because 69 herds
have been infected, most of them in Ontario, and thousands of farms in the
United States have lost eight per cent of the nation’s piglets to the virus
this year.
“The problem is people either get tired or they get
complacent or both, and the reality is, that bug’s going to be around for
multiple years, probably, and we just absolutely cannot afford to drop our
guard,” said Novak.
