U.S. Pork Sector Evaluates Prospects of Eradication of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea

The Executive Director of the Swine Health Information Center suggests the eradication of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea from the United States will present a greater challenge in some regions than others. As part of its November enewsletter the Swine Health Information Center has released its monthly Domestic and Global Swine Disease Surveillance Reports.

Swine Health Information Center Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg says, with regards to Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea, the good news is detections are within limits and remain relatively low.

Clip-Dr. Paul Sundberg-Swine Health Information Center:

For quite awhile now there has been suggestions that we have learned the lessons from PED. We have learned its control, its elimination from farms, how to move it off of farms and keep it off of farms, biosecurity, control, response and we're at the spot where we could enter into an eradication program, a program that should take PED out altogether.

I don't believe that there's a wide industry consensus for that yet. Certainly, there are regional differences within the U.S. about the probability for success of that type of a program. So, while that's an interesting thing to note and to talk about, I'm not so sure we're at an industry wide consensus to go forward with that. I think its something that we still have to look at for the future and we have to have a good discussion about the advantages and disadvantages, the economic consequences, the economic considerations.

I know, within our disease report, the advisory group says we should consider that. This may be an opportunity. This low level may be an opportunity for a national control and elimination of PED but, with those regional differences, I think we have to be careful about how we approach that and make sure we have an industry wide consensus before we go forward.