Environmental Testing Allows for Efficient Allocation of Resources in Preventing PED

The use of environmental testing is allowing pork producers to maximise the effectiveness of swine transport  trailer washing and disinfection to help prevent the spread of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea.As part of its July eNewsletter, the Swine Health Information Center has released its monthly domestic and global swine disease monitoring reports.

SHIC Associate Director Dr. Lisa Becton says, despite decreased PED case positivity across all age categories, the percent of positive cases from vehicles and truck washes remains high.

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

Having the ability to detect PED in environmental samples has been very very important because it gives us information on how widespread the virus is.Is it heavily contaminated on tuck washes and on vehicles or even at packing plants? So, it gives producers and their staff an opportunity to be able to identity the focus and cleanliness on vehicles and trucking. 

Not all farms have PED and so environmental testing can help identify areas of challenge and be able to focus both time and resources on those challenges.But it is also important to be able to assess all of the different ways that we can perform transportation biosecurity and it is a challenging area because in the industry there is not enough truck wash facilities or even trucks and trailers to a lot of times 100 percent wash all of these vehicles.So again, having the ability to identify where challenge areas are for these viruses has been very important to help focus time and effort.

Dr. Becton notes concerns over PRRS remain high with case positivity above expected state specific baselines in Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota and Indiana and the first detection of the PRRS lineage 1C.2 in North Carolina, while PDCoV case positivity remained above state-specific baselines in Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, and North Carolina and PCV2 and PCV3 case positivity increased moderately. SHIC's domestic and global swine health monitoring reports can be accessed at swinehealth.org.