Farmscape for October 19, 2020

The Swine Health Information Center has added new tests for identifying specific strains of porcine sapovirus and pseudorabies to its Diagnostic Assay Catalog.
The Swine Health Information Center's Diagnostic Assay Catalog is a compilation of the various studies and diagnostic tests the center has funded over its five year period.
Two new tests have been added to the catalog, a sensitive and specific test for detecting porcine sapovirus genotype III for neonatal diarrhea investigation and a test that provides differential detection of variant strains of pseudorabies virus, including the highly pathogenic Chinese strain.
Swine Health Information Center Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg says these tests are now available to all veterinary diagnostic labs.

Clip-Dr. Paul Sundberg-Swine Health Information Center:
What we're trying to do here is we're trying to think out of the box a bit and to ask what if and look at the different things that are circulating that are possibilities and they may not be anything.
We may have an increase in diagnosis rather that an emerging disease.
There may be things that we find that are endemic and are widespread and it's really not emerging.
We're just finding them better.
But, without these new diagnostic tests that are pushing the envelope for diagnosticians, we may miss something that will be important and something that we need to address.
It's a way to look at the whole list of health of swine, try to figure out what could come at us, be prepared with what could come at us through better diagnostics and early detection.
That's the whole effort here for the center.
We're trying to do a better job to make sure we keep our pigs healthy in North America.

Dr. Sundberg says both of these projects are good examples of the collaboration and the willingness for the diagnosticians and the researchers to work together to address these issues.
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Bruce Cochrane.

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