Biosecurity Remains Key Defence Against Spread of Swine Disease

The Associate Director of the Swine Health Information Center suggests a consistent focus on biosecurity remains the first line of defence against the spread of infectious diseases among pigs.

As part of its monthly Enewsletter the swine health Information Center has released its domestic and global swine disease monitoring reports for April.
SHIC Associate Director Dr. Lisa Becton says this month’s report examines the continued high prevalence of PRRS in the wean-to-market category in some states, a decrease in the percentage of positive submissions of the enteric coronaviruses, mainly in the wean-to-market category, and a substantial increase of Influenza A virus in the wean-to-market category.

Quote-Dr. Lisa Becton-Swine Health Information Center:

PRRS is still one of our predominant diseases and the reason we see a lot of case submissions.Some of the good news is we're seeing a reduction in incidents for our sow farms but we are still seeing a high level of case submissions for wean to market finish animals and some of the states that are seeing some issues are Indiana and Iowa.

However, in talking to some of our domestic disease experts, some of that may be due to a change in strategy and the focus more on the wean to market pig submissions.Also, we are seeing again some cases of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, even though they are starting to reduce, especially with warmer weather.
But, there are some areas of regional activity such as in Kansas and so that's always something to continue to monitor especially when we have a lot of trucks moving around.

Lastly, influenza is something that we're still continuing to monitor.There are some cases that are being submitted above expected so that's also another thing that will be really good to monitor because influenza doesn't seem like it's seasonal anymore.

Dr. Becton says biosecurity remains our first line of defence against any of these diseases.She says the challenge of working in cold weather is starting to diminish but its important to keep up the focus because diseases still transmit any time of year.