U.S. swine health experts watch Australian outbreak closely

Dr. Megan Niederwerder with the Swine Health Information Center says, “It’s a virus that we do not have in the United States but we are aware of the virus.” She tells Brownfield that Japanese encephalitis has cost between six and ten percent in production losses in Australia. “It causes reproductive losses in sows, thinking about mummified fetuses, increased stillbirth, increased abortions, weak neonatal piglets that may have congenital tremors, so this virus is really a reproductive outcome disease.”