Why should the U.S. pork industry continue to pay attention to Japanese Encephalitis Virus (JEV) in Australia? "Because we learned the lesson from porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED)," Paul Sundberg, DVM, executive director of the Swine Health Information Center (SHIC), says bluntly.
He remembers veterinarians talking about PED in 2012 as it circulated around China and caused a lot of trouble for producers.
"We would say, ‘Boy, that’s a bad disease. It’s a good thing we don’t have it here.’ It would be to our peril to not learn lessons from that experience," he says. "We need to take it as a warning shot that says this could happen to you next."
The key is preparedness, Sundberg emphasizes. The disease may still get here, but there is no reason for the U.S. to be completely blindsided by this virus primarily transmitted by Culex spp. mosquitoes.
How Does JEV Compare to West Nile Virus?
Sundberg says the most similar disease he can compare it to in the U.S. is West Nile Virus. But he points out one significant difference. Pigs are not an amplifying host for West Nile – pigs are an amplifying host for JEV.
"Both viruses are in the same family and mosquito-related transmission is the same," he says. "But pigs don’t serve as an amplifying host for West Nile."
What Makes the U.S. a Concerning Environment?
The U.S. has the same mosquitoes that are able to transmit the virus as those found in Australia. Sundberg says those mosquitoes are able to take in and harbor the virus and transmit it. Not all mosquitoes can do that, he points out. Unfortunately, the U.S. does have the kind of mosquitoes that can.
The second thing that concerns Sundberg is the U.S. also has plenty of reservoir hosts, including waterfowl, egrets and other birds that could carry the virus.
"We didn’t know when West Nile started that West Nile could get into such a wide variety of birds species that could act as a source for the virus to get back into mosquitoes. Those are the types of things that we have to pay attention to here. We really don’t know the answer to what all those bird hosts are with the JEV that caused the Australian outbreak," he says.
Read the rest of the story at Farm Journal’s Pork.
[Source: Farm Journal’s Pork 1 September 2022]