Canada: Alberta launches small-scale swine disease surveillance project

This project targets swine producers, both small-scale domestic and wild boar producers, who have 10 sows or fewer, or who market 100 pigs or fewer per year. The main goal of this project is surveillance and early detection of federally and provincially reportable diseases like African swine fever (ASF), Salmonella, influenza, porcine epidemic diarrhea, swine delta coronavirus and transmissible gastroenteritis.

This project can help producers directly or private veterinarians who refer cases from small-scale swine producers. The herd’s symptoms must meet at least one of the following criteria:

• sudden increase in death
• sudden increase in abortions (pregnancy loss)
• illness manifested by septicemia (red to purple discolouration of the ears, abdomen and sometimes legs) leading to death
• increased number of pigs having diarrhea leading to death
• increased rate of difficulty in breathing and coughing leading to death

Only dead pigs will be examined. Whole carcasses will have a post-mortem examination performed and will be tested for ASF, influenza virus, coronaviruses or Salmonella as determined by the attending veterinarian or veterinary pathologist.

Once the post-mortem examination has been performed, the Alberta government veterinary pathologist or an assigned veterinarian will contact the submitter to provide the findings.

There is no fee for submitting carcasses for testing; however, producers are responsible for the cost of getting the carcasses or samples to a government laboratory.