After a long hard battle over the summer with Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea, the President of HyLife says they’ve been able to get control of it and are now working to get rid of it.

In the current outbreak throughout the province, there has been a total of 78 reported cases of PED and most of which have come from the southeast.

Claude Vielfaure says through this process they have constantly been looking at all their procedures and have been adding extra precautionary measures to try and mitigate the spreading of the disease.

"Just a lot of washing of trailers, disinfection, liming and so on to try to kill the virus so it’s really caused our truck washes to have a lot of extra work. Also, in the barns, lots of cleaning, extra disinfection stuff like that, that is a lot of extra work for our people."

Vielfaure adds this outbreak has taken a big toll on their staff but he adds, their staff have really stepped up to the plate and are now being rewarded for their efforts by seeing good healthy pigs in their barns.

Vielfaure notes this has also taken quite a financial toll as well.

"It’s obviously a big blow financially, we’ve been working through those numbers but at the end of the day it’s just about getting through it, getting to the other side, getting healthy pigs and producing healthy pigs for the company."

Vielfaure says the white powder you may notice in some farmyard driveways is a lime powder which is spread on farms that are positive for PED. So when trucks and trailers roll out of the yard, it gets on the tires and kills off any virus that may be sticking on. He notes that's one of the ways to keep it from spreading but he adds this disease has been quite unique in the way in which it spreads. 

"Those barns have been there for a long time and we’ve always been able to control any other disease. This one has just been a little bit of an odd one, it’s very infective and moves very easily so I don’t think so. I hope we’ll be able to get back to our normal protocols and to do what we’ve been doing for the past 30 years."

Vielfaure says they've had a couple of PED outbreaks in the last month but notes they are very minor finishing barns where the pigs aren't affected as much.