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Biosecurity key to fighting animal disease

In comparison to last year, this winter was fairly quiet for pork producers with the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus.  Dr. Liz Wagstrom, chief veterinarian for the National Pork Producers Council says they have been testing around 800 samples from farms every week.  “Anywhere between 35 and 100 are positive,” she says.  “Most of those appear to be in finishers or wean to finish barns and very few sow farms.”

But, even though there has been less PEDv activity this winter, Wagstrom says, it doesn’t mean producers should relax their biosecurity measures heading into the spring and summer.  “What we need to do is keeping doing all the good things we’ve been doing to try and control it,” she says.

Wagstrom tells Brownfield biosecurity is also important because of some diseases the American Swine Veterinarians Association is tracking globally.  “At the top of the list that we’re really concerned about is a really hot strain of pseudorabies virus in China,” she says.  “We eradicated pseudorabies virus form the US many years ago.  We don’t want it back.”

She says farmers need to work with their veterinarians to be prepared and diagnose unusual disease situations early to prevent them from spreading across the country.