The Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica staff veterinarian with a focus on PRRS, the swine disease that so many are trying to eliminate, is Dr. Reid Philips. Reid was on hand for this year’s PRRS ARC&E Seminar.
I asked Reid to provide a wrapup viewpoint about how this year’s seminar went. He says this year’s program came together really well. The seminar keeps growing each year and this year was no different. BIVI supplies a list of speakers that are involved in area control projects, several of whom you’ve heard from here on AgWired. Reid says that as new tools and studies are developed on PRRS this seminar becomes more important to producers. The value for both the participants and BIVI is the interaction and sharing of information.
Dr. Jim Branstad, Keota Veterinary Clinic, spoke about PRRS Surveillance in area regional control projects during the Boehringer Ingelheim PRRS Seminar. He should know all about pig surveillance since as he says, “I spend about 90 percent of my time with pigs.”
The message he had included the need to talk individually with producers in the project area. That one on one approach works well since he’s only had one producer who didn’t want to cooperate in the program. So besides having full participation if possible he says the next crucial thing is testing and this is a challenge. He says they’re doing surveillance testing but not as often as “we need to, to know everything.” He also spoke about there being too much pig movement within the area project he’s been involved with. He believes this is causing a lot of the problems they’ve been having.
Dr. Jim Lowe is an independent veterinarian and one of the attendees at the Boehringer Ingelheim PRRS ARC&E Seminar. He’s the guy on the Mac. I asked him why he attends this seminar.
Jim says that he spends a lot of time dealing with PRRS and this program allows him time to visit with colleagues and share information. He’s involved with several regional control projects and says this ability to share information is very valuable. He says these projects are “a tough row to hoe.” One of the things he’s been seeing is that the small well-defined projects with good producer participation are having some success. There’s that need for participation coming up again in one of my interviews. Jim says that sometimes it’s not so much a science project as much as a “persuasion” project to get producers to participate.
There is a serious financial impact from the PRRS disease in pigs and at the Boehringer Ingelheim PRRS Seminar we learned how much. Dr. Derold Holtkamp, Iowa State University, made a presentation titled, “Bio-economics: The Impact of PRRS & PRRS Control. He had recently completed a Pork Board cost of PRRS study and says they were able to use that data to calculate the impact of the disease in an area control project.
He says they looked at a Minnesota project which they felt best exemplified success at elimination of the disease and asked the question, “What was the value of the productivity improvements in that county after they successfully eliminated the virus there?” So they made a comparison between having the virus eliminated and projecting out to 2018, to if the area had continued in that time period without having the virus eliminated. The difference was positive $4.2 million to the county, using a net present value analysis, if they completed the project. That sounds like real value for going to the effort of getting rid of this disease!
During the Boehringer Ingelheim PRRS ARC&E Seminar participants heard reports from some of those area regional control & elimination projects. One of those was the North-Central Illinois Project. Our speaker was Dr. Noel Garbes, Bethany Animal Hospital Swine Services.
Noel says the PRRS (porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome) project has been going on for about two years and early on they were feeling pretty good about it. However, as many have noticed, the fall season presents challenges. He says the question being dealt with now is manure pumping at that time of year. As he puts it, “we’re chilling pigs and stressing them so maybe there’s something that happens there.” So they’re taking a look at that like other projects in other areas are also doing. He also mentions that participation in the area has to be one hundred percent which is a constant struggle. Looking ahead he says that using filters may be the way to go.
Hello from the agriblogging highway at the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica PRRS ARC&E Seminar in Chicago. We’ve got a good crowd. The ARC&E stands for Area Regional Control & Elimination of this seriouis swine disease.
I’m collecting photos and interviews. The interview will be posted during the next week since I’ve almost completely lost my voice. I’ll have to edit myself back in so you can understand me better. Hate it when this happens. Actually it has never happened like this before!
It may not look like much on the outside, but the new Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica (BIVI) livestock vaccine research facility in Sioux Center, Iowa is everything a pig could want on the inside.
“It’s a state of the art facility,” said Dr. Phil Hayes, BIVI Executive Director for Biologicals Development. “To demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of new vaccines, we must start with pigs that are healthy.”
To keep the research pigs healthy, Phil says there is very limited access – which is why the dedication ceremony this week was held at the Ridge Golf Clubhouse down the road. “Shower in, shower out. The researchers who enter the facility gown as if they were entering a surgical operating room,” Phil explains. “The air that enters the facility is sterile-filtered. Anything that could interfere with the health of the pigs is excluded.”
Iowa Governor Terry Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds both attended the dedication of a new Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica (BIVI) livestock vaccine research facility in Sioux Center, Iowa on Wednesday. They are both pictured here with Dr. Phil Hayes of BIVI and Sioux Center Mayor Dennis Walstra at the symbolic ribbon cutting.
“The state is very proud to partner with a quality company like Boehringer Ingelheim,” said Governor Branstad. “We are an agricultural state and we’re proud to be an agricultural state. I was governor before back in the 80s when agriculture was going through what we called the farm crisis and agriculture was the weakest part of the economy – today it’s the strongest.”
I got to do a quick interview with the governor at the dedication where I also asked about his reaction to the Iowa Corn Cy-Hawk trophy settlement – which he is pleased with.
It is always a pleasure to cover the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica (BIVI) Swine Health Seminar in North Carolina and see so many young swine producers with their families. Makes me optimistic about the future of agriculture.
The big barefoot kid in this photo surrounded by smaller kids is BIVI’s Dan “The Man” Johnson, who is organizer of this great annual event on the beach in North Carolina that combines just the right amount of work and play. The producers spend a day getting swine health and industry updates on Friday and then get family activity time on Saturday. “We want to be more than a vendor to our customers,” Dan says. “We know that their families are important to our producers, so they are important to us as well.”
This year’s meeting had a pirate theme and concluded with a really fun and funny pirate magic show put on by No Sleeves Magic. It was great fun and the photos are proof!
At the BIVI Swine Health Seminar in North Carolina last week, Dr. Greg Cline gave an update on the acceptance of the 3-way vaccine to combat Porcine Circovirus, Mycoplasma Hyopneumoniae AND PRRS. “The acceptance and reaction has been phenomenal,” Greg says. “It delivers in a lot of areas and we look for the acceptance to continue to accelerate as time goes by.”
The 3FLEX product is the first 3-way combination approved by the USDA to be mixed and administered as a single shot for pigs three weeks of age or older, combining BIVI’s Ingelvac CircoFLEX® 1, Ingelvac MycoFLEX® 2 and Ingelvac® PRRS MLV 3 in one 2 mL shot. “it was a vision by Boehringer-Ingelheim’s a very convenient vaccine in a one-dose, small dose delivery and have it still be convenient, safe and effective,” Greg said, calling it a winning team for hog producers. Chuck interviewed Greg last September when 3FLEX was first introduced.
New results from a trial done in Minnesota show that the PRRS modified live virus vaccine appears to reduce viral shedding.
The trial results were presented at last week’s Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Swine Health Seminar in North Carolina by Dr. Joel Nerem of Pipestone Vet Clinic. “What we found was that vaccinated pigs shed virus for fewer days and for a shorter duration of time than the vaccinated control pigs,” he said.
Why is that important in the fight against Porcine Reproductive & Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS)? “It is important when we are working on maintaining a high health status for a particular region,” Joel explained. “One of the things our group is looking at, is in the control of PRRS, can we establish regions that are free of the virus and what technologies can we utilize to maintain those PRRS-free regions?”
The Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Swine Health Seminar in North Carolina offered updates in two important swine health areas – mycoplasma hyopneumoniae and PRRS.
Dr. Erin Strait with Iowa State University talked about getting the most out of diagnostics for M. hyopneumoniae. “The biggest issue I usually see is over-interpretation of diagnostics and not understanding that those diagnostics are often skewed towards false negative,” she said. “Mycoplasma hyopneumonia in live pigs can be pretty hard to detect and the diagnostics tend to be a lagging indicator. Determining prevalence in the nursery stage can be very challenging.”
Dr. Rick Tubbs with Green River Swine Consultants is a practicing vet who serves Tosh Farms, a family-owned hog operation in Tennessee. He presented information on the impact of the modified live PRRS virus vaccine for control of PRRS in an endemically infected continuous flow finish site. He described how they ended up with a PCV2 problem which they dealt with by depopulating finisher sites, moving to a wean-to-finish operation, changing wean age and vaccinating all pigs for PCV2.
“This particular virus disease is a constantly evolving challenge and we have to adapt to meet the challenge,” Rick says. “The PCV2 vaccine is a wonderful product. It’s been one of those home runs in the industry.”
“Hog Economics in the Biofuels Era” was the topic of a presentation by Purdue University economist Dr. Chris Hurt at the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Swine Health Seminar in North Carolina.
Dr. Hurt says government policies like biofuels and even food stamps were built upon a “psychology of surplus” to increase prices. “We continue to see a psychology of surplus in our policy from Washington, when it turns out we are in a period of shortage of basic food ingredients,” he said.
Hurt says that corn for ethanol has been a demand shock for the market since 2005, but another big demand shock has been soybeans to China. “If you put it on acres of land, back in 2005 we were using about 16 million acres for those two demands,” he said. “By the time we got to the 2010 crop, that was 46 million acres – almost a tripling of the acreage.”
The hog industry has finally reduced herds enough to adjust to the higher feed prices, which has increased consumer prices for pork and that has led to stagnated growth for domestic consumption. However, Hurt says exports are increasing tremendously and now make up 20% of production, with big demand coming from Mexico and China in particular.
Nobody talks common sense about animal welfare better than Dr. Temple Grandin of Colorado State University.
If you are in the livestock industry, unless you live in a cave, you have heard of Dr. Grandin. In fact, a decent portion of the general public now knows this amazing woman, thanks to the HBO movie starring Claire Danes which celebrates Temple’s triumph over autism. That movie and her best-selling books have allowed her to get out and talk to the general public about animal welfare issues, something she considers to be very important for the livestock industry to do.
Temple spoke this morning to the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Swine Health Seminar in North Carolina. One of her suggestions about handling pigs humanely and effectively is to walk the pens. “Pigs are visual animals,” she explains. “Walk the pens and teach them to follow you.”
Controlling enteric diseases caused by ileitis and Salmonella can help both keep food safe and pork producer profits growing. “Enteric diseases are sometimes below the threshold of detection,” said Kent Schwartz, DVM with Iowa State University. “Feed is the largest input into the cost of production and anything that comprises intestinal function has a propensity to cost money and among many other factors are infectious diseases.”
Dr. Schwartz recommends that producers keep good records on animals and determine whether they are achieving their potential. “Lawsonia and Salmonella are very common infections,” he said. “These agents can cause disease that are not necessarily visual but can impact feed to gain and we do have for those two agents very effective vaccines that can take them out of the equation.”
Listen to or download an interview with Dr. Schwartz here: Dr. Kent Schwartz
Since control of Salmonella is a food safety concern, BIVI senior veterinarian John Kolb says it is is something producers can and should address. “Salmonella’s always going to be there,” he said. “One more thing that we can do to reduce the amount of Salmonella in the pig itself, is use vaccination.”
Dr. Kolb recommends producers get their vet involved and determine when exposure to Salmonella starts and make sure the vaccine gets in ahead of it.
“Value through Innovation” is the theme for Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica (BIVI) at the World Pork Expo this year and the company is proud of its commitment to helping pork producers.
I stopped by the BIVI exhibit at the trade show yesterday and talked with Tim Bettington (right), executive director of the company’s swine division and Randy Buller (left), senior associate director for the division.
“BI is very committed to the swine industry,” Tim told me. “We have several other species under our umbrella but the swine industry is the key one for us. We’ve grown up as a swine organization and globally swine is the number one sales driver for us.” Tim says they are in the process of completing an R&D facility in Germany that will complement the facility they have in Ames, Iowa that has been very successful in developing the company’s PRRS vaccine.
Randy says there is a great deal of interest among producers in the 3FLEX vaccine they introduced just last year. “It is the only product in the swine industry that mixes three vaccines in a similar platform,” said Randy. The 3FLEX consists of three vaccines: Ingelvac CircoFLEX®, Ingelvac MycoFLEX® and Ingelvac® PRRS MLV to address circa virus, mycoplasma, and PRRS in one shot.
The folks at Automated Production Systems led a peaceful pig protest at the 2011 World Pork Expo Thursday with their 60s-themed roast pig.
With cries of “Fork More Pork” in different languages, the AP team really outdid itself this year. The company, which specializes in swine production equipment such as feeders, ventilation and flooring, has a different theme for their pig every year. Previous years have included Mexican Fiesta and Elvis, but this one will be hard to top.
Notice that the roast pig is sporting peace sign earrings and shooting a peace sign with its cloven hoof! The video shows just how much the AP folks really get into their theme.
BBQ is what’s cooking at World Pork Expo. This is the best smelling show I’ve been to this year! Here’s Scott Beaton, Lynch BBQ. He’s been cooking this hog since about six o’clock this morning. I visited with him but all I got on the spices side was, “our secret seasonings.” Okay. This pig will be served this afternoon at the Novus International tent.
It’s the sixth year for Scott to be cooking at World Pork Expo. He’s a big Minnesota Vikings fan and has had a chance to cook for them which was a real highlight in his cooking career. Scott also says that the pork industry is vital to their business and to the state of Iowa. Scott Beaton Interview
Now Dr. Pearse Lyons can say, “There’s an app for that.” That app is the Alltech iPhone App. It was just announced this morning during the Alltech International Symposium. I’ve got it on my iPhone.
The app:
Helps pig producers search for information about swine health issues, environmental concerns and pork quality. Includes customizable commodity listings and local weather forecasting.
I learned a lot during Boehringer Ingelheim’s (BIVI) 2011 Swine Health Seminar, but maybe my biggest take away was that there are three diseases that seem to be a problem for the swine industry: mycoplasma, flu and PRRS. I also learned some other valuable information: BIVI has a triple threat for swine disease control called 3FLEX.
This I learned more about from Tim Bettington, BIVI’s Executive Director of the Swine Division who told me that as an animal health company, PRDC is a critical component of their business because it is one the biggest challenges they face in the swine industry. That is what drove them to create their 3FLEX product, which addresses three of the four key critical pathogens that comprise PRDC (Porcine Respiratory Disease Complex): circa virus, mycoplasma, PRRS and influenza. 3FLEX consists of three vaccines: Ingelvac CircoFLEX®, Ingelvac MycoFLEX® and Ingelvac® PRRS MLV in one 2 mL shot.
Bettington said at this time 3FLEX doesn’t address the flu, but that is an area of opportunity that they are working on.
The FLEX concept has dual meaning for the industry. The speakers all noted that oftentimes when a pig contracts one disease, it becomes more susceptible to others. This vaccine helps to address that issue. Second, each of the veterinarians mentioned that they have used the 3FLEX product in different ways with success so it is important to work with your local veterinarian on the best ways and the best times to integrate this new product into your sow management strategies.
In this week's program Chuck talks with Mike Adams, AgriTalk.
Chuck and Mike often wind up at the same events all over the country so it seemed like a good idea to do a little AgriTalking about the changes they've seen in the ag media landscape.
The Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica staff veterinarian with a focus on PRRS, the swine disease that so many are trying to eliminate, is Dr. Reid Philips. Reid was on hand for this year’s PRRS ARC&E Seminar.
It may not look like much on the outside, but the new 
To keep the research pigs healthy, Phil says there is very limited access – which is why the dedication ceremony this week was held at the Ridge Golf Clubhouse down the road. “Shower in, shower out. The researchers who enter the facility gown as if they were entering a surgical operating room,” Phil explains. “The air that enters the facility is sterile-filtered. Anything that could interfere with the health of the pigs is excluded.”
Iowa Governor Terry Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds both attended the dedication of a new 
It is always a pleasure to cover the 
It has been o
New results from a trial done in Minnesota show that the PRRS modified live virus vaccine appears to reduce viral shedding. 
The 
Dr. Rick Tubbs with Green River Swine Consultants is a practicing vet who serves Tosh Farms, a family-owned hog operation in Tennessee. He presented information on the impact of the modified live PRRS virus vaccine for control of PRRS in an endemically infected continuous flow finish site. He described how they ended up with a PCV2 problem which they dealt with by depopulating finisher sites, moving to a wean-to-finish operation, changing wean age and vaccinating all pigs for PCV2.
“Hog Economics in the Biofuels Era” was the topic of a presentation by Purdue University economist Dr. Chris Hurt at the 
Nobody talks common sense about animal welfare better than Dr. Temple Grandin of Colorado State University.
Temple spoke this morning to the 
Controlling enteric diseases caused by ileitis and Salmonella can help both keep food safe and pork producer profits growing. “Enteric diseases are sometimes below the threshold of detection,” said Kent Schwartz, DVM with Iowa State University. “Feed is the largest input into the cost of production and anything that comprises intestinal function has a propensity to cost money and among many other factors are infectious diseases.”
Since control of Salmonella is a food safety concern, BIVI senior veterinarian John Kolb says it is is something producers can and should address. “Salmonella’s always going to be there,” he said. “One more thing that we can do to reduce the amount of Salmonella in the pig itself, is use vaccination.”
“Value through Innovation” is the theme for 
The folks at 
Now Dr. Pearse Lyons can say, “There’s an app for that.” That app is the 
In this week's program Chuck talks with Mike Adams, AgriTalk.
