The National Pork Board’s new Swine Health Intelligence Center will provide the U.S. Pork industry a new line of defense against new and emerging swine diseases.
Last month the National Pork Board unveiled plans for the creation of a new Swine Health Intelligence Center that will help producers and veterinarians address the health of their pigs directly on farm.
The organization’s thee primary goals will include the formation of a global intelligence network to track diseases circulating in swine around the world, develop the diagnostics needed to find and address infections when they arrive and help producers form an information sharing network.
Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg says PED has demonstrated to veterinarians and producers they need to be better connected.
PED is still out there.
PED is still circulating in some of the finishing floors and still infecting some farrowing houses so PED is still alive and the immunity is not long lasting so we’ve got to continue to address that, we’ve got to continue to work with that.
PRRS is another one that we are going to focus on.
PRRS continues and it hits us for 600,000,000 plus every year.
So we’ve got to look at those types of endemic diseases and do a better job with those.
We also have to have our antennas up for new things that are going to come in and that’s really a primary deal.
PED and those types of diseases, we had Circovirus back 10 years ago or 15 years ago, we had PRRS that came in before that, even Pseudorabies way before that.
There’s always production diseases that are introduced and we have to be better prepared for that and learn that lesson that they’re going to come so we have to be able to address them.
Dr. Sundberg says the organization will form the task forces that will identify actions needed to share intelligence on emerging diseases, develop the diagnostics to identify these diseases and communicate that information.
