SHIC Reports Fourth Month of Increased PRRS Positivity in Wean-to-Harvest

The Associate Director of the Swine Health Information Center is encouraging pork producers to step up their focus on transport biosecurity, especially during the cold winter months.As part of its monthly eNewsletter the Swine Health Information Center has released its January domestic and global swine disease monitoring reports.

Swine Health Information Center Associate Director Dr. Lisa Becton says this month's domestic report highlights a spike in PRRS positivity in the wean-to-market category, the fourth month of increased positivity.

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

This is one of the areas that is often overlooked but does have a very big impact on production.The increase could be due to more focus on this particular age group but also trying to understand how does downstream pork production impact biosecurity and the health status of our sow farms because everything is interconnected.

When we look at the positivity and the numbers of testing in that category, it's always good to be mindful of what areas can this particular sector impact and one of this is transport biosecurity.Winter conditions tend to facilitate a lot of pathogen movement, whether that's enteric coronaviruses and other enteric diseases or even PRRS and so it’s something that we're always mindful of because winter conditions in and of themselves really don't make it easy for us to do things we like to do on a day to day basis such as washing hallways, washing trailers, making sure things are dry before they get moved as evidenced by the temperatures these last couple of weeks, especially in the Midwest and even in Canada.

It's been a significant challenge and so we really have to try to mitigate that, whether it's using some dry disinfectant, housing trailers indoors but just being mindful of what we're seeing out there and also think of how do these pathogens transmit and figure out how do we make our biosecurity better.

The Swine Health Information Center's complete domestic and global swine health surveillance reports can be accessed through the SHIC web site at swinehealth.org.