Dr. Bob Rowland with Kansas State University (left) and Dr. Max Rodibaugh (center), a swine practitioner from Indiana, were the last two speakers at the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica’s (BIVI) Area Regional Control of PRRS seminar last week in Chicago. They are pictured here during the final segment of the seminar featuring a roundtable discussion with all presenters.

Max, who serves as chairman of the PRRS Task Force of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians, says building industry cooperation and support is critical to having a plan to control PRRS. “There has been a flurry of activity this summer and fall of different groups working on ideas for PRRS and we see a need to pull those together so we can keep that information in one place and disseminate it to the industry,” he says. The task force is considering a website specifically for PRRS control.

Bob Rowland is a professor at K State’s college of vet medicine and director of the PRRS CAP project which provides funding for PRRS control research through USDA. Ultimately, he says funding for PRRS control has to come from every segment of the industry. “I outlined kind of a NASCAR concept in which we bring together a lot of little legs on a caterpillar and use that to fund a large project,” Rowland says. Even though the swine industry is going through some very tough times right now, Rowland believes it is the ideal time to attack PRRS control as producers change to adapt to the economic situation.

Listen to or download back-to-back interviews with Drs. Rodibaugh and Rowland here: