Are you a North American veterinarian providing services to swine producers (either as a private practitioner or through employment with a production company)? My name is Jonathan Tangen and I am a second year veterinary student at Iowa State University. This summer I had the opportunity to work with Dr. Derald Holtkamp along with several other veterinarians. I invite you to participate in the brief survey described below, which will support my research project that I plan to submit for the AASV student competition.
What is it?
The Time to Negative Pigs PRRS Survey we’re asking you to participate in is a combined effort by the Colleges of Veterinary Medicine at Iowa State University and the University of Minnesota to help our swine industry better control porcine respiratory and reproductive syndrome (PRRS) virus. The goal is to design a sampling-testing protocol that is appropriate and consistent with what practitioners are doing today and to better control PRRS in the process.
Why is this needed?
PRRS virus costs the swine industry $550 million per year. Because PRRS is such an important economic disease to the swine industry, Iowa State University and the University of Minnesota, as well as many other universities and veterinary clinics throughout the country, have combined efforts to try to better control and eventually eliminate this costly disease.
What does it involve?
We are conducting a study to evaluate the factors influencing the time required to achieve PRRS virus negative weaned pigs in breeding herds. We are carrying out this interview in order to record and analyze the details of the PRRS virus sampling-testing protocols employed by swine veterinarians in the US to monitor breeding herds.
Please complete the brief, 13-question survey found at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PRRSurvey. It should take only 5-10 minutes to complete.
Will this be kept confidential and anonymous?
All individual results will remain strictly confidential and information will only be presented anonymously in summary form. We will share with you your own individual results and the final anonymous summary results of our survey.
Thank you for your consideration to support these efforts to help our swine industry control and eliminate PRRS virus!