A third Manitoba
farm has been hit by Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus.
“When
you get three cases in two weeks, it’s worrisome,” said Andrew
Dickson, general manager of Manitoba Pork Council.
“It’s
unsettling for the industry because if it got into farms across the
province we’d see a loss in production and producers’ income will
be down,” he
said.
It’s
not clear whether the three cases are related or whether any of the
farms that have been hit are part of the large corporate operations.
Meat
packers, including Maple Leaf Foods and Olymel, were alarmed several
years ago when low prices threatened to drive most of the hog farms
in Manitoba and Saskatchewan out of business, so they bought the big
ones, including Big Sky in Saskatchewan and Puratone in Manitoba.
