AgWired

You’ve heard the expression, can’t see the forest for the trees. Well, when it comes to the PRRS eradication conversation at the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica 4th PRRS ARC&E Seminar at the International PRRS Symposium, you have to make sure you’re seeing the big picture without missing important details.

“Important stuff has some different levels – the micro level, the macro level and the meta level. The big picture most applies to the meta level, but the micro and macro levels has more to do with information people need to make decisions,” explained Dr. Dale Polson, who works in a technical resource capacity for BIVI in Des Moines during a break after his talk entitled, “Sufficient Surveillance for ARC&E: Getting the big-picture without missing the important stuff.” He said there are ways to gather information at all three levels without leaving one out. He added the limitations on some information gathering has been the high cost of getting that data, and that’s where they need to find surveillance approaches that are effective and economical.

Polson said there also needs to a common language to promote better collaboration. And he believes a meeting, such as this one sponsored by BIVI, is key. “Venues like this, opportunities like this are absolutely… required to facilitate that type of interaction.”

Listen to Chuck’s interview with Dr. Polson here: Interview with Dr. Dale Polson

2012 BIVI PRRS ARC&E Photo Album

One of the talks at the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica 4th PRRS ARC&E Seminar at the International PRRS Symposium was dubbed “Unreasonable Expectations,” given by Dr. Eric Neuman, originally from Illinois, but now a veterinary epidemiologist with Massey University in New Zealand. Part of the “unreasonable expectation” in PRRS eradication could be thinking the disease can be solved easily. The problem is, the last lingering cases of the swine diseases seem to keep it going. Neuman calls it an anti-Pareto Effect, referencing the Pareto principle that says taking care of 20 percent of causes, solves 80 percent of the problems, the low-hanging fruit researchers look for. But in disease eradication, especially with PRRS, it’s flipped around.

“We can get rid of 99 percent of the cases, [but] it’s the last 1 percent [that can’t be solved] that make the difference,” Neuman says. In addition, he said there’s plenty of surveillance information about PRRS… maybe to the point of information overload. “We don’t need more information… I just need the right information.”

Neuman added that he likes where the industry is at this moment, but he’s worried there’s not enough diverse thinking contributing to a wider spectrum of answers. He said we know how to take PRRS out of a single farm, but we don’t know how to eliminate it on a larger scale. Neuman hopes that meetings like this one will foster more creative thinking.

Listen to Chuck’s interview with Dr. Neuman here: Interview with Dr. Eric Neuman

2012 BIVI PRRS ARC&E Photo Album

While Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica might be one of the key players in swine vaccines, the company’s 4th PRRS ARC&E Seminar was not about selling inoculations.

“The reason [we created this symposium] was [there was] a lot of frustration about how to control PRRS. We didn’t really make the progress we thought we should be making, and we found out we had to take a different approach to things,” explained Dr. Stephen Lange, Head of Global Marketing Swine for BIVI, during the seminar held in conjunction with the International PRRS Symposium. He said meetings like this one helps promote a dialogue between all the key players on how to move forward together. In addition, BIVI offers veterinarians and representatives in the field, as well as a dedicated PRRS solutions team… all to promote communications. “What we want to do is partner with our customers to come up with a holistic approach to disease control.”

Listen to Chuck’s interview with Dr. Lange here: Interview with Dr. Stephen Lange

2012 BIVI PRRS ARC&E Photo Album

Providing field practitioners with a bioportal to help them make better decisions was one topic of conversation at the 4th Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica PRRS ARC&E Seminar, an event held in conjunction with the International PRRS Symposium. Chuck caught up with Dr. Jean-Paul Cano, a veterinarian with BIVI and on the company’s PRRS team. His talk, “Application of Disease Bioportal for decision making in a production system,” focused on how to adopt bioportals (mentioned in our previous article) used in other animal agriculture to use for swine, in particular in fighting PRRS.

“We learned about this tool about two-and-a-half years ago, and we approached the guys at the University of California and [asked], ‘Can we use the tool and adapt it to the swine industry which has a very different dynamic than the cattle industry or poultry industry?’ and use that tool to tell practitioners which kind of virus they’ve got,” Cano explained, adding that he expects you could see this kind of bioportal become more widespread. “We think this could become the new standard for vet clinics and production systems for organizing all that information.”

Cano said this is still a work in progress, but it could be ready to go in possibly just a few months. He said this is just another example of BIVI investing in solutions for pork producers.

Listen to Chuck’s interview with Dr. Cano here: Interview with Dr. Jean-Paul Cano

2012 BIVI PRRS ARC&E Photo Album

Researchers at the University of California-Davis have created a bioportal, a place where information on a variety of diseases from all over the nation and the world can be combined into one place. The idea was of great interest at the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica 4th PRRS ARC&E Seminar at the International PRRS Symposium (and we’ll talk more later how the folks at BIVI want to use it). Dr. Andres Perez, a veterinary epidemiologist at Cal-Davis, told Chuck during an interview that their bioportal helps control diseases by combining information into one place.

“One of the challenges that we have is to identify what is a new introduction of a virus. Then we can make a distinction between outbreaks from circulation of the disease within the farm versus a new introduction,” Perez said. He added this real-time tool is particularly helpful with something like PRRS, and they have been working with BIVI and the PRRS control group to see how the bioportal could be helpful in the eradication of PRRS. “We are developing prototypes right now with the idea to scale it up to include some progressive control programs and later on, statewide and nationwide.”

Perez said that the system is less than 1 percent of production costs… very cost effective when you consider how much an outbreak might cost.

Listen to Chuck’s interview with Dr. Perez here: Interview with Dr. Andres Perez

2012 BIVI PRRS ARC&E Photo Album