The research coordinator with Canadian Swine Health Board says stepped up biosecurity offers the best defense against the introduction of brachyspira into the swine herd.
Brachyspira is the name of the family of bacteria that causes swine dysentery.
To familiarize pork producers with brachyspira the Canadian Swine Health Board is circulating a Swine Health Awareness Bulletin which outlines the infection and its symptoms.
Dr. Al Theede, the Canadian Swine Health Board’s research coordinator, says this is an old disease that had all but disappeared and over the past ten to 15 years hadn’t been a big concern but which has shown up around the world.
Being something that we really aren’t too familiar with we thought it would be valuable to get this awareness bulletin out to raise awareness as the name says and make them aware of it because it is an important disease in that it’s easy to transmit.
It’s really transmitted by contaminated manure and transmits place to place or animal to animal through manure and feces and so, if you can do the clean-up and stop the manure from spreading from one barn to the other on someone’s boots or potentially on truck wheels or in a transport truck that was picking up pigs from your barn, all those sort of things.
If you just minimize that and make sure everything is clean and disinfected and dried you don’t have much problem.
The other big aspect to that is the brachyspira organisms can be carried by rodents and other things, so mice and rodents and that sort of thing so again good biosecurity, good rodent control, bird control and those sort of things just so the pigs are isolated is what you have to look at.
The Swine Health Awareness Bulletin is being distributed by the Canadian Swine Health Board and the provincial pork organizations.
For more information on brachyspira visit the Canadian Swine Health Board web site at swinehealth.ca.
