Farmscape for December 10, 2013

The vice president science and technology with the National Pork Board says the focus of the research effort aimed at controlling Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea is shifting to containment and eventual elimination of the virus.
As expected the spread of a Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea outbreak in the United States has accelerated with the onset of colder weather.
Dr. Paul Sundberg, the vice president science and technology with the National Pork Board says researchers are now stepping up their focus on how to deal with an infection on the farm.

Clip-Dr. Paul Sundberg-National Pork Board:
Initially in June, when we started the effort, that research effort at that point was primarily focused on the virus itself.
There was so much that we didn't know about PED and how it would work in our production systems that we needed to understand more about the virus so we funded research in pathogenicity, in transmissibility and survivability and even in propagation and diagnostic techniques.
Now we've just completed a call for proposals this fall and we have funded projects that are focused on how to address an infection once it gets on the farm, especially in the farrowing units.
So the questions become how do we handle those sows, what do we do within that herd to stimulate immunity in the sows, how long does the immunity last, how effective is that immunity going to be and what other tools that we need to have and implement in order to be able to cost effectively control the infection once it gets into a sow farm and eventually eliminate it from the sow farm so the sows can reach negative status.

Dr. Sundberg encourages producers to have response plans in place in the event their herds become infected, including plans for closing down the farm, restocking with replacement gilts and communicating with veterinarians, transporters, feed and equipment suppliers and neighbors.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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