Colder Weather Increases Swine Disease Challenges

The Swine Health Information Center is calling for a stepped-up focus on biosecurity in response to increases in the prevalence of PRRS, PED and Influenza A over the past month. 

As part of its December eNewsletter the Swine Health Information Center has released its monthly domestic and global swine disease monitoring reports. SHIC Associate Director Dr. Lisa Becton says washing and disinfection during the cold winter months is always a challenge and pathogens tend to survive for extended periods in cold wet weather.

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

This month, unfortunately we've seen the highest PRRS case positivity in the wean to market category since November 2018 and this was a 50 percent case positivity that was identified. The majority of those cases arise from the lineage 1C.5 strain and that detection actually reached its highest single month level of 403.

In addition, there is some regionality of increased PED case positivity and that's seen across Iowa, Oklahoma, Minnesota and Missouri. There's also some increased activity in influenza in the sow component with approximately 36 percent case positivity.We're also monitoring Mycoplasma but it is seeing a little bit of a decrease in the wean to market group but it's still a higher case positivity identification as compared to other years.

The other thing that was noted, there were alarms for different changes in increases in tissue diagnosis for the following diseases including influenza, Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae, PRRS, Pasteurella multocida and Strep suis.

Dr. Becton says what this tells us is we can expect an increase in health challenges over the winter which necessitates an increased biosecurity focus.
SHIC's domestic and global swine disease monitoring reports can be accessed at swinehealth.org.