The executive director of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians is encouraging pork producers to take advantage of the warmer weather to tighten up biosecurity in defence against Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea.
With the onset of warmer summer weather the number of new cases of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea being reported in the U.S. on a weekly basis appears to have slowed.
Dr. Tom Burkgren, the executive director of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians, notes the virus is fairly environmentally stable in the cooler weather, so as we approach winter, the fear is that the transmissibility of the virus will increase.
I think probably the big question that’s on everybody’s mind in the future is what’s next fall and winter going to look like.
Are we going to have the same type of fairly dramatic increase in new cases once the colder winter hits and a lot of that is going to depend on sow immunity.
On these herds that have already become infected and have been cleaned up and gone negative, I think the question that a lot of people have in mind is how long lasting, how effective is sow immunity going to be next fall, next winter in protecting piglets as they get exposed to virus and so that’s a big question.
I think we still need to be cognisant of keeping good biosecurity, trying to leverage biosecurity with warmer weather, keeping in mind how we clean and disinfect, how we separate the clean and dirty sides on the farms.
The same goes for how we deliver pigs, having the protocols for biosecurity set in place and following those, always recognising the compliance with the biosecurity is everything.
If people are not complying with the biosecurity protocols then they’re really worthless.
Now is not the time to relax.
Now is really the time to put the pressure on and try to get biosecurity as tight as possible still.
Dr. Burkgren encourages producers to use every method they can to build a firewall between farms that are negative and farms that are positive to decrease the ability of the virus to gain entrance.
