One of the two porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) virus cases reported on Friday turned out to be a false positive.

Alberta Pork Executive Director, Darcy Fitzgerald, says it's good news as now there's just three confirmed cases in the province since it was first discovered in Alberta back in January.

"The sample looked like it was positive," Fitzgerald explains. "The herd vet thought, 'Things just don't look quite right here, it doesn't look like it really is PED', and so they sent the samples back in and over the weekend they were retested and it turned out there wasn't a problem."

He says it's unfortunate to have the three confirmed cases, but notes Alberta is doing "pretty good" to only have three cases in the last five years.

On Monday, Alberta Pork said on their website a source of the virus hasn't been found yet, and any possible connection between the three outbreaks remains uncertain.

The first case was found on a 400-head hog operation, which Fitzgerald says has sent all their pigs to market in stages to depopulate, so they could disinfect and clean out the barn.

He says the virus only effects pigs, and these animals were healthy and did not have the virus when they went for processing.

"There will be a lot of sampling to make sure the virus is out. In the next few months, they'll look at trying to do some repopulating of the barn again."

Fitzgerald says the operation with the second case is still under movement control, but they'll keep their pigs instead of depopulating.

He adds, the farm where last week's other confirmed case was reported is also under movement control.