AgWired

Testing saliva for human diseases has been around for as long as a century, but it was only about a decade ago that someone thought it might work for livestock as well.

The swine industry is getting very close to being able to detect the presence of disease in a herd using a rope that pigs can chew on and leave their saliva for testing and that was the topic of two presentations Friday at the Boehringer Ingelheim swine health seminar in North Carolina.

John Prickett with Iowa State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine has been studying oral fluid testing of swine for four years and he says the rope collection method works pretty well. “The pigs love it. They’re very inquisitive by nature, there’s not a lot for them to do and they are always looking for the ropes – they have fun with it,” he says.

They have data on testing for a variety of diseases and now the work is moving forward with assay development, which Dr. Jeff Zimmerman of Iowa State University says is the key to making oral fluid testing affordable. “Between 12 and 18 months from now, we are going to have antibody-based assays that are ready to go,” Zimmerman said. “And that’s going to be when we start getting the costs down.”

Zimmerman says disease control relies on good data and he says better data would have helped the industry get correct information about the H1N1 outbreak disseminated faster.

BIVI swine health seminar photo album

Listen to or download back-to-back interviews with John and Jeff here:

Swine producers need to carefully evaluate the costs of prevention versus treatment when it comes to disease in their herds.

“We need to try to categorize the different types of diseases, as to whether it has a real good type of treatment, a low cost type of treatment, or maybe a high cost animal health problem if we do get it in the herd, and then start making animal health management decisions based on that,” said Iowa State University ag economist Dr. Jim Kliebenstein at the Boehringer Ingelheim swine health seminar in North Carolina on Friday.

One point he made is that “total prevention” of any disease is probably unaffordable. “Maybe getting it to where there’s only a ten percent chance or a five percent chance, but once we get above that, the costs of going to even greater lengths far exceed the benefits,” he said.

Kliebenstein presented the economic impact of swine disease, especially PRRS, both from a personal level and on an average per producer and for the industry. He was a partner in a gilt multiplier herd when they had an outbreak of PRRS that caused them to lose their contract. “We lost a significant number of dollars,” he related. “We had gilts that were on the books at $250 because we had a production contract. Overnight, they went to $50 or less.”

Overall, Kleibenstein estimates the annual cost of just PRRS to the U.S. swine industry at $600-800 million a year and could increase to $1 billion if the disease incidence keeps growing. He strongly recommends that producers do their homework and determine what works best for their operations to control and prevent swine diseases.

BIVI swine health seminar photo album

Listen to or download an interview with Dr. Jim Kliebenstein here:

Better control of the air that hogs breathe offers the greatest promise for preventing the transmission of PRRSv that the industry has ever seen.

That is what Dr. Scott Dee with the Swine Disease Eradication Center in Minnesota told producers attending the Boehringer Ingelheim swine health seminar in North Carolina.

We have chatted with Dr. Dee before here on Agwired – most recently at World Pork Expo – and his main message is one of optimism for ultimately eradicating PRRS. “I’ve just never seen anything work like this before, where we can actually protect a farm from a neighbor virus,” Scott says about using air filtration for hog operations, which are being studied long term at the research center in Minnesota.

Cost may be a limiting factor for producers, but Scott says they have seen even the most expensive systems can pay for themselves in one year.

BIVI swine health seminar photo album

Listen to or download an interview with Dr. Scott Dee here:

Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Inc. (BIVI) is passionate about pigs, which is why working with producers to control PRRSv is so important to them.

Dale Polson, with technical resources in the swine segment of BIVI, was first up on the company’s annual swine health seminar in Carolina Beach today and his presentation talked about the “Golden Rule” of PRRS control. “Transmit unto your neighbor as you would have your neighbor transmit unto you,” Polson said. In other words, “To maximize PRRS control, it can’t be just what you do, it has to be what you and your neighbor do.” That means a coordinated regional control initiative.

Dale applies the Stockdale Paradox – “Confront the brutal facts, but never give up” – to the PRRS situation. “PRRS is a tough disease, probably the hardest one we have ever faced,” he said. “Confronting the brutal facts is facing the need to cooperate but never giving up is then doing the work, because it is a lot of work to do right.”

BIVI swine health seminar photo album

Dale summarizes the main points of his presentation in this interview: