Swine Health, Animal Care, & Quality Assurance
Canadian Pork Excellence
CPE includes the three major components of our national on-farm assurance programs: PigSAFE, PigCARE, and PigTRACE. These programs help Canada maintain its reputation as a producer of high-quality pork in both domestic and international markets. The transition from CQA to PigSAFE|PigCARE was completed in early 2024. Program training continued, with many site managers and other Manitoba swine sector personnel becoming due for their three-year PigSAFE|PigCARE refresher training. Three audits were conducted on the program validators to ensure they were performing assessments to program standards, and another six audits were completed with just the barn manager and staff. Audit results showed the programs are being well-implemented in Manitoba. Approximately a dozen audits will continue to be conducted annually.
This year marked PigTRACE’s 10th year as Canada’s mandatory swine traceability program. Key highlights from 2024 included the launch of a new mobile app, starting the process to expand the selection of program ear tags, and submitting formal comments in response to the federal government’s proposed changes to livestock traceability regulations. The PigTRACE app is available in mobile app stores (Google and Apple). Program participation remains strong in Manitoba with an estimated 87% of all movements reported to PigTRACE in 2024. This represents 183,000 movement events, the most since the program began. Key highlights from 2024 include a federal-provincial-industry tabletop exercise focused on the use of PigTRACE in the event of African Swine Fever and successful negotiation of future changes to the federal regulations that mandate PigTRACE. Work to bring new ear tags to the PigTRACE product line remains ongoing, as does the migration of the national database to Cloud computing, which will bring significantly lower operating costs and better system performance.
Foreign Animal Disease Preparedness
Manitoba Pork and Manitoba Agriculture have been working with Serecon Inc. to document our joint provincial African Swine Fever (ASF) response plan, through funding provided by the national ASF Industry Preparedness Program. The plan covers procedures for the Emergency Operations Centre, depopulation and disposal, disease surveillance, producer communications, and other topics. The project team expanded consultations in 2024 to improve the plan by including other swine sector stakeholders, such as transportation and assembly. In addition, Manitoba engaged closely with other western provinces to start integrating our plans and communications into a Western Canada approach. Manitoba piloted the plan through a national mock ASF exercise in November, which helped us to identify its strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement. The plan was presented to producers at our fall producer meetings for further feedback.
Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus
2024 was the first full year under Manitoba’s PED Elimination Plan, after being drafted and enacted in late 2023. A strong focus on enhanced biosecurity was placed in the high-risk area of Manitoba, which is outlined as the main preventative action of the plan. This enhanced biosecurity is our best defense, and the sector has shown the value of the efforts preventing cases through the high-risk timeframe of spring/summer 2024.
The importance of biosecurity was also reinforced through the completion of a PED Modelling project in summer 2024. Working with a veterinary epidemiological consultant, the Mantioba PED scenario was modelled against several strategic disease response interventions highlighted in the plan. The model showed enhanced biosecurity having the greatest impact on minimizing the overall outcome of a PED outbreak. In December 2024, the rapid and aggressive response portion of the PED Elimination Plan was tested when the first case of PED in Manitoba was confirmed for 2024.
Manitoba’s hog sector continues to work collaboratively and transparently to manage PED in the province. This disease response model with industry and government participation is truly unique to Manitoba and has allowed for notable progress and success in the implementation of our Plan.
Biosecurity & Disease Surveillance
Manitoba Pork continues to offer a suite of biosecurity programs to producers and sector stakeholders, covering biosecurity in transport, wash station biosecurity, and on-farm protocols. These resources are regularly reviewed and updated to ensure current information.
Sitting on the Canadian Pork Council’s National Biosecurity Committee, Manitoba Pork continues to provide insight into the development of the new National Biosecurity Benchmark. As part of this work, pilot testing of the various components of the benchmark will again be offered to producers in Manitoba starting in 2025.
Disease surveillance continued to be a priority in 2024. Our disease surveillance programming at high traffic facilities expanded to include Swine Deltacoronavirus on top of Senecavirus A and PED this year. Swine Deltacoronavirus was confirmed in three Manitoba farms in 2024 and with that detection the industry moved to include the virus as part of its surveillance efforts. These three farms have since worked through elimination of the virus and are all now negative for the disease.
This surveillance program continues to offer benefit to industry in both understanding the current disease pressure by regular testing at our assembly yards but also provides warning signals when disease is detected at our federal processing plants. This programming with continue in 2025.
Producer Outreach
The Extension and Outreach Coordinator spent 2024 strengthening our ability to assist producers through expanding communication channels and continuing to build trust within these relationships. A WhatsApp chat was initiated for producers to receive important information directly on their phones as a way of directly sharing communications.
Our focus this year, during on-site visits and face-to-face meetings, has been mainly targeted at making the transition to group sow housing more tangible for producers and listening to concerns producers have moving forward. Two group discussion meetings were set up, one being for Hutterite colony producers to come discuss concerns or issues, and one producer-only event focused purely on initiating peer-to-peer conversation about group sow housing. A group sow housing forum, held in summer 2024, welcomed over 85 producers, and was framed around open communication between producers who have completed their barn’s conversion and producers who are yet to convert, sharing open and honest opinions with regards to lessons learned. These meetings are conducted with the sole goal of improving communication to and from Manitoba Pork so we can better address the current issues facing producers.
Several new initiatives will launch in 2025 because of these discussions, with continued focus on supporting group sow housing conversions, keeping producers well informed and involved during the 2025 code of practice update, assisting producers with the upcoming zinc-oxide feed reductions, and more.
Small-Scale Pig Farmer Engagement
Manitoba Pork has been working with Manitoba Agriculture, Prairie Swine Centre, and the Squeal on Pigs Manitoba team to engage with small-scale pig farmers in the province. Funds provided through the ASF Industry Preparedness Program have allowed us to produce take-home materials, webinars, and communications for all hog producers. The intent is to help small-scale farmers enhance their animal care, food safety, and biosecurity practices on-farm; and keep our larger producers well informed and educated on ASF and how to protect themselves.
Squeal on Pigs Manitoba
Thanks to the support of both the national African Swine Fever Industry Preparedness Program and the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership, Squeal on Pigs Manitoba continued operating at a high level in 2024. Under the direction of our project coordinator, Dr. Wayne Lees, and our Field Operations Manager, Devon Baete, Squeal on Pigs Manitoba led the way in invasive swine elimination across Canada.
Bringing together stakeholders from across the country, Squeal on Pigs Manitoba created the environment to develop a national mapping and reporting framework. This work is incredibly valuable in creating a Canadian picture of the wild pig issue. Canada’s national ASF surveillance program expanded in 2024 to include wild pigs, and Squeal on Pigs Manitoba immediately began submitting samples into this program to support ASF freedom in Canada.
In April of 2024, Squeal on Pigs Manitoba hosted the inaugural National Wild Pig Summit in Brandon, MB in conjunction with Assiniboine College. This event was a great success bringing together people from across North America. The summit highlighted topics such as policy direction, trapping technologies, and experiences with wild pigs from across the world. A second summit is being planned for 2025.
Field level work continued to be the top priority for the program. With 100 trail cameras out on the landscape, our field manager and field technicians continue to track, trap and eliminate wild pigs. With the program being in operation for a few years, the Squeal on Pigs Manitoba team spent some time in 2024 evaluating the years of data collected from wild pigs that were eliminated. This helps to better understand the population in the province as well as demographics including age, size, sex, and other characteristics, and helps guide future direction of field work.
Communication and outreach to the public remain an integral part of the Squeal on Pigs Manitoba program. Awareness of the program points people in the direction of where to report sightings to allow for follow-up by our field team. Manitoba Pork led the development of a fulsome communications campaign in 2024 including digital marketing, social media, radio advertising, and hard copy resources to spread the word across the province.
