Farmscape for November 13, 2019

A project underway in Vietnam will help the North American pork sector prevent and prepare for African Swine Fever.
The Swine Health Information Center has entered phase one of its Asian African Swine Fever collaboration with tours of ASF affected farms in Vietnam.
The effort is being undertaken to assist the Vietnamese pork sector in dealing with the infection and to gather information to help the North American pork sector defend against the introduction of the disease and be prepared in the event of an outbreak.
Swine Health Information Center Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg says, with the outbreak of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea, we had to research and learn lessons as we went.

Clip-Dr. Paul Sundberg-Swine Health Information Center:
We thought that this might be an opportunity to study African Swine Fever in an outbreak real time on farms and learn those lessons that we had to learn with PED before ASF would get to North America.
Things about, for example, entry pathways onto the farm and possible role of feed in transmission, things about using oral fluids as a monitoring and surveillance tool, about cleaning and disinfecting and repopulating a farm once it's cleaned and disinfected and also about trying to isolate a virus in one area of the farm and keep the other areas productive or walk the virus off of the farm by selective depopulation and see if we can manage and control it.
This is an opportunity to go over to Vietnam and help them with the outbreak with information and workshops, on line training, that type of thing and managing the virus on the farm and managing that outbreak.

Dr. Sundberg says intelligence gathered in Vietnam should help keep ASF out of North America but, if we are unsuccessful in preventing the entry of the virus, it will help producers and their veterinarians react much more efficiently, quickly and successfully than what we've had with other pathogens.
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Bruce Cochrane.

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