Animal health officials in Quebec’s Monteregie have confirmed three more hog operations with cases of porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) since Friday.
The province’s swine health team (EQSP) said Friday it had confirmed PED in hogs at a 2,700-head nursery operation at St-Aime, with an epidemiological link to the province’s sixth case at a nearby nursery barn in the same area.
The province’s eighth case was confirmed over the weekend, EQSP said in a separate release Monday, at a 3,500-head nursery operation at St-Liboire, also in the eastern Monteregie.
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EQSP said a traceback is now underway to see if the St-Liboire operation had epidemiological links to previous cases at St-Denis-sur-Richelieu and St-Aime.
The province’s ninth PED case was then confirmed Monday afternoon, in animals at a 550-sow farrowing barn at St-Hugues, also in the eastern Monteregie, about 25 km north of St-Hyacinthe.
The St-Hugues hog producer and the farmer’s veterinarian are fully co-operating with EQSP, the team said in its release. The farm has been quarantined and officials are tracing back possible sources of infection.
In infected nursery- and finishing-weight hogs, PED symptoms include diarrhea, vomiting and loss of appetite, and death loss rates generally run between one and five per cent, EQSP said.
In infected newborn and unweaned piglets, EQSP said previously, mortalities range from 50 up to 100 per cent, while in infected full-grown breeding hogs, mortality rates are generally lower than one per cent.
The latest confirmation brings Canada’s total of on-farm PED infections in hogs to 83 since the virus was first confirmed in southern Ontario last January, including 69 in Ontario, four in Manitoba and one in Prince Edward Island.
Ontario hasn’t reported a new PED case since Dec. 23, at a farrowing/weaning operation in the Waterloo region. Manitoba’s most recent confirmed case was a sow barn in the province’s southeast on Sept. 24.
In the U.S., where the PED virus arrived in April 2013, officials have since reported over 9,400 confirmed cases in over 30 states. — AGCanada.com Network
