Farmscape for May 4, 2016

A Saskatchewan based veterinary epidemiologist says the number of truck wash facilities in the U.S. capable of cleaning and disinfecting swine transport vehicles to the standards available in Canada is extremely limited.
Effective May 2 the Canadian Food inspection Agency reinstated requirements for Canadian swine transport vehicles returning from U.S. farms to be washed and disinfected in the U.S. before returning to Canada.
Dr. Leigh Rosengren, with Rosengren Epidemiology Consulting, who participated in a 2015 study which looked at the availability of wash facilities in the U.S. and the services they offer, says there aren't very many wash stations that a transport can wash at.

Clip-Dr. Leigh Rosengren-Rosengren Epidemiology Consulting:
Although there are obviously many truck washes or car washes in the United States there were only 27 that were quickly available for swine carriers and of those the hours of service varied substantially.
The next thing we found is that most of those were not located close to the Canadian border or necessarily on the routes the Canadian transports would commonly be returning to Manitoba through.
The next thing we looked at was what was the services that those facilities offered.
The industry standard right now is to offer hot water, disinfectant as well as fresh water and high pressure of course.
On top of that, we would add in the winter that a truck should be able to dry before freezing.
What we found is that there were actually very few facilities that offered all of those industry standards on top of being available and accessible.
That's the primary concern as opposed to being able to wash when they return  to Canada in a facility that does offer that industry standard.

Dr. Rosengren says, while it will be up to the transporter and the producer to decide whether to re-wash these vehicles in Canada, she expects many will do so despite the added costs and downtime.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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