Farmscape for December 8, 2020

The Executive Director of the Swine Health Information Center reports we are seeing the typical seasonal increase in infections but nothing unexpected.
The Swine Health Information Center has released it's December Domestic and Global Swine Disease Surveillance reports.
Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg says the domestic situation probably isn't anything that people wouldn't expect.

Clip-Dr. Paul Sundberg-Swine Health Information Center:
As we close up the barns as the weather changes and as colder weather comes in you tend to have an increase in respiratory diseases and we certainly have seen that with PRRS.
We were at a very low level this summer and that's a seasonal level and that's good.
We were hopeful we would be able to increase biosecurity enough to keep it down during the PRRS outbreak season and, as a whole, the industry wasn't very successful with that so we're starting to get the upper boundaries of the forecasting models for PRRS.
Mostly it's coming from wean to market animals which points out the importance of finishing floors and their role in disease transmission so that's an important one.
Also, I think, with PRRS we're going to note that most of the issues that are coming we can look at state by state status.
Most of the issues now are centered in the Midwest which isn't really a big surprise as well because that's where a lot of the finishing floors so things have kind of come together to look at similar situations for PRRS as what we'd expect with seasonal outbreaks.

Dr. Sundberg says the thing to note is the seasonal patterns.
He says, whether it's PED, PRRS or Mycoplasma, we usually have lower rates of infection when the barns are opened up during the summer but, as we close the barns for colder weather, we see higher rates, especially with the respiratory diseases.
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Bruce Cochrane.

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