Researchers working on behalf of Swine Innovation Pork are developing new methods to help pork producers identify best approaches for protecting their herds from the airborne transmission of disease.
To assist pork producers in reducing to the threat posed by the airborne transmission of disease causing pathogens, scientists working on behalf of Swine Innovation Porc are developing new methods to evaluate the effectiveness of various pre-filter and filter combinations.
Dr. Caroline Duchaine, a professor in the Depoartment of Biochemistry, Microbology and Bioinformatics with Laval University, explains there are several systems available, sometimes based on antimicrobial filtration and sometimes just standard filtration so researchers are setting up protocols to test various filtratiuon stratgies.
Dr. Caroline Duchaine-Laval University:
We realise that there are very little optioins offered to the prpducers and the companies to evaluate the efficiency of the filter systems to either exclude or filtrate the biological components of the air contamination.
There's a lot that has been done on the dust concentration but it;s not well understood how those filtratuioin systems reduce the risk of transmitting or being contaminated by infectious agents through the airborne route.
In our proposal we will look at one virus and one bacteria.
The virus is PRRSv which is the most important viral disease in swine production in Canada and we will also study the Streptococcus suis serotype 2 which is a bacterial pathogen so those will be our two models.
But it's very important to mention that, once our system is working, we could styudy other types of infectious or bacteral or viral agents in our systems.
Dr. Duchaine expects to have a workable evaluation system in place by April of 2016.
Source: Farmscape