A media event at World Pork Expo sponsored by Fort Dodge Animal Health gave the outlook in several different areas for hog producers – the market, H1N1 and control of Porcine Circovirus Type 2 (PCV2).
It goes without saying that the market outlook is pretty dismal. University of Missouri professor emeritus Glenn Grimes summarized his forecast simply. “Farrows trending down, continued productivity growth, fewer imports of Canadian hogs and pigs, decrease in pork exports, weak domestic demand, high feed costs, red ink for producers – and the bottom line is we have to reduce the herd five percent minimum and maybe ten.”
Download or listen to some of Dr. Grimes remarks here: Glenn Grimes
Dr. Greg Stevenson with the Iowa State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory discussed swine influenza testing and USDA surveillance for swine flu. It was a pretty technical presentation that detailed the genetic difference between the H1N1 virus in humans and in swine. “When the USDA is going to be talking about surveillance, they’re going to be calling it H1N1 Flu Outbreak Virus (FOV), trying to distinguish it from the H1N1 that is in the swine population now in the U.S.,” said Dr. Stevenson. “We’ve got to talk about it intelligently and we’ve got to be careful to distinguish the two for the sake of the swine industry.” To talk intelligently about it, he says we’re all going to have to become virologists, and he proceeded to give a crash course in virology in 25 minutes. Learn more here. wpx09-stevenson.mp3
On the PCV2 control front, there is some good news for producers. Dr. Joe Connor, president of Carthage Veterinary Service, gave an update on PCV2 vaccines. Specifically, he talked about the efficacy of Suvaxyn PCV2 One Dose from Fort Dodge Animal Health. “We’ve had very high success with the vaccines in all the studies,” he reported. “We’ve shown in all of the studies that we are comfortable vaccinating with singe dose vaccines such as Suvaxyn at 3 or 5 weeks of age.” The studies done in commercial herds in the United States, Europe, Japan and New Zealand all indicated that Suvaxyn significantly reduced total mortality rate and improved growth performance. Nice to hear some positive news for pork producers!
Listen to Dr. Connor’s summary here. wpx09-connor.mp3 Download here: Joe Connor