U.S. Midwest Outbreak of PRRS Expected to Reduce Pork Supplies this Summer

A partner with Polar Pork says an especially nasty strain of Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome that is circulating in the U.S. Midwest is likely to result in reduced pork output this coming summer. Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome is a widespread, highly transmissible viral disease in pigs that causes severe reproductive failure in sows and respiratory illness that results in high mortality.

Florian Possberg, a partner with Polar Pork, says PRRS is a disease that is continuously mutating and we've getting reports that parts of the U.S. Midwest that have a high density of hog production are being particularly hard hit.

Quote-Florian Possberg-Polar Pork:

There's a particular strain now that seems to be extraordinarily difficult that is going through much of the Midwest and no doubt has a chance to get into some of the hog dense areas of areas of Canada as well and there's significant losses. There's units, I'm told, in the Midwest that are only producing one third of the baby pigs that there were just four or five months ago just because of this disease. It's kind of frustrating.

Some barns have invested millions of dollars in filtration systems to clean the air coming into the barns and that has helped but it hasn't solved the problem. At the end of the day the thing that has been fortunate for us in Saskatchewan is that we don't have a lot of farms near us so the opportunity to get it through the air is very limited and there's limited traffic with feed trucks and that sort of thing which are all vectors that PRRS tend to spread. So, our biggest asset is that our hog density is such that we don't have neighbours that can bring infection onto our units through the air, wind and moisture and that sort of thing.

Possberg says the goal is to keep our pigs free of the disease through biosecurity. He says this strain of PRRS will ultimately filter through and the pigs will eventually build up immunity but it is likely to have an impact of the supply during the summer months.