Manitoba cooperator

Page 1

Tired of tents

Feet and all

Caterpillar infestation wearies many » PG 3

Canadian pork hits home run in China » PG 8

SERVING MANITOBA FARMERS SINCE 1925 | Vol. 75, No. 25 | $1.75

June 15, 2017

Timely rains for some, but hail for others

manitobacooperator.ca

Just ducky

A more general rain was in the forecast for this week at press time which could address moisture shortfalls BY ALLAN DAWSON Co-operator staff

S

ome Manitoba farmers got the rain they were praying for last weekend, some didn’t get enough and a few unfortunately also received hail. The good news is a more general rain was in the forecast at press time June 12 and the hail, although devastating for a few farmers, was believed to be isolated. “We’ve heard from about a dozen producers about hail ( June 9),” David Koroscil, Manitoba Agricultural Services Corporation’s (MASC) manager of insurance projects and sales said in an interview Monday morning. “It’s too early to tell the extent of the damage. So far it seems fairly isolated.” At least one farmer in the P i l o t Mo u n d - Cr y s t a l C i t y area reported on social media that some of his young crops appeared to be destroyed by hail the evening of June 9. There were also social media reports of imploded, empty grain bins in southwestern Manitoba and toppled hopper bottom bins near Langdon, North Dakota.

Lindsay Anderson of Brandon cuddles with a duckling at the Manitoba Summer Fair petting zoo June 11.

Vaccine put to the test as PEDv outbreak continues Clinical trials have shown high hopes for the vaccine, which has been deployed to a producer in the PEDv hot zone in southeast Manitoba

See rain on page 6 »

By Alexis Stockford Co-operator staff

A

Publication Mail Agreement 40069240

Photo: Alexis Stockford

vaccine that researchers say has been over 90 per cent effective against PEDv in clinical trials is on track for another field test in southeast Manitoba. Dr. Volker Gerdts, associate director of research at VIDOInterVac and one of the lead researchers on the project, says the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) approved the vaccine for testing under real-world outbreak conditions. Vaccine has been shipped to one producer in southeast Manitoba as a result. “What we’re doing there is essentially assessing the vaccine in the field,” Gerdts said. A similar trial took place in June

2016, when three barns in southeast Manitoba became infected. The vaccine targets the four most common strains of PEDv found in North America, including those confirmed in Manitoba. “It’s a vaccine for the sows; so you vaccinate the sows twice before they give birth to the piglets and then they’re passing on the immunity to the suckling piglet,” Gerdts said. Immunity is passed through milk and colostrum, VIDOInterVac told the Manitoba Co-operator in July 2015. PEDv concern often centres around piglets as the disease may cause 80 to 100 per cent mortality in infant animals. As of 2016, it was estimated the disease had cost the North American pork industry over eight million pigs and $400 million since 2013.

VIDO-InterVac’s vaccine has been in development since late 2013, after the first U.S. outbreak caused large-scale losses south of the international border but before the first confirmed Canadian case in January 2014. Gerdts and his team quickly completed an animal model for the disease and moved into animal trials. Several vaccine candidates were tested and a frontrunner chosen for later trials. Within a year, Gerdts and his team had developed and tested the prospective vaccine. “I guess it’s really a combination of us putting a lot of internal resources onto this project and then, also, being able because of our infrastructure to work with PEDv in high containment,” he said.

VIDO-InterVac’s location at the University of Saskatchewan features a 250,000-square-foot facility, one of the largest Level 2 and Level 3 containment research facilities in North America. “We had the capacity to do a lot of these trials in parallel,” Gerdts said. By December 2015, the CFIA had approved the vaccine for field testing and, in August 2016, VIDOInterVac announced it had partnered with European company Huvepharma to commercialize it. Huvepharma could not be reached for comment at the time of printing, but testing under commercial conditions is ongoing, according to the VIDOInterVac website. Gerdts says it is his hope that See PEDv on page 6 »

Turning the tap: Water saving urged » PAGE 7


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.