Category Archives: Animal Health

When trying to decrease the virus challenge to a piglet, it is first necessary to figure out where the virus is outside the pig, how it moves around the farm.

The Swine Health Information Center’s (SHIC) June Domestic Swine Disease Monitoring Report is available.

After pioneering a SHIC-funded system to improve swine health by reporting pathogen test results from public veterinary diagnostic laboratories across the Midwest, a team led by faculty from Iowa State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine has plans to glean even more insight from the vast data set. A new three-year, $1 million grant from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture has been awarded to enable the Swine Disease Reporting System team and collaborators expand how this data is utilized to inform disease trends and improve swine health.

FSIS is announcing that it has updated its guideline for pork producers on controlling Salmonella in swine from pre-harvest through slaughter.

According to Iowa State University’s David Verhoeven, vaccines using mRNA technology have been shown to reduce disease on farms, and it’s all but impossible for them to end up in your food.

The hot, humid days of summer often bring the challenge of coccidiosis in pre-weaned piglets in the farrowing barn, but that challenge has now become more prevalent year-round, according to Laura Bruner, DVM, with the Swine Vet Center in St. Peter, Minnesota.

A SHIC-funded effort aimed at increasing swine disease awareness, prevention, and preparedness, The Early Regional Occurrence Warning project, was launched by Drs. Xiaomei Yue and Mariana Kikuti with the Morrison Swine Health Monitoring Project in September 2022. On May 9, 2023, the first TEROW report was sent to participants and will be released weekly.

A study funded by the Swine Health Information Center and conducted by Drs. Michael Rahe and Rachel Derscheid of the Iowa State University Veterinary Diagnostic Lab is the first to report astrovirus being associated with respiratory pathology in pigs. In their work, “Direct detection of porcine epitheliotropic viruses: porcine astrovirus 4, porcine hemagglutinating encephalomyelitis, and porcine parainfluenza virus in clinical cases of undiagnosed respiratory disease,” the researchers report PoAstV4 was detected in lesions consistent with viral respiratory infection in 73% of pigs tested.

Are you having recurring health issues in your herd? Improving pig health and well-being may mean changing biosecurity protocols. Making a plan and getting everyone on board is crucial to success. Once everyone on the team understands why the changes are being made, they can buy in to ensure the changes are done correctly.

Streptococcus suis is a challenging bacterial pathogen when it comes to swine health since it can cause infections in the brain, joints, heart and lungs of young pigs. Streptococcus suis is a normal inhabitant of the respiratory tract and is found in all swine herds.