Category Archives: Animal Health

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

$50 billion. That’s the estimated economic impact over 10 years if African swine fever finds its way into the United States, according to the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS).

A SHIC-funded report evaluating diagnostic data on porcine circovirus type 3 obtained during 2016-2018 by the University of Minnesota Veterinary Diagnostic Lab has been posted. Under the direction of Dr. Albert Rovira, the study objectives were to determine associations between PCV3 presence and quantity with lesions and clinical signs. Results showed PCV3 may cause death in fetuses, myocarditis, and systemic vasculitis in pigs. This data is helping to contribute to an ongoing SHIC-funded study to determine an applicable US case definition.

At their June 29, 2022, meeting, the Swine Health Information Center Board of Directors voted to proceed with a revision of its 2022 Plan of Work to fund a new program on finishing phase biosecurity. SHIC’s Board approved reallocation of $1 million from the 2022 budget for the program to be developed in response to disease data from its Swine Disease Reporting System and other recent finishing phase disease outbreak investigations. SDRS data is shared monthly with SHIC stakeholders on its website and in its newsletter.

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome continues to be one of the most important pathogens in the global swine industry. Findings from a recent cohort study, the PRRS Outbreak and Management Practices have shown that there is a large diversity of management practices across the U.S swine industry to deal with PRRS outbreaks in breeding herds. The findings and deliverables of POMP included a benchmarking platform to collect and analyze PRRS outbreak data. Results revealed a large diversity of management and immunological solution approaches implemented in breeding herds either to control or eliminate PRRSV.

The Iowa State University Veterinary Diagnostic Lab received 22 porcine fetuses from six litters originating in Mexico in the spring of 2020. After extensive testing, metagenomic sequencing identified a new virus in the genus Morbillivirus (porcine morbillivirus or PoMV) from the fetal tissues. Other currently known members in the genus Morbillivirus, including measles virus, rinderpest virus, peste des petits ruminants virus, canine distemper virus, phocine distemper virus, cetacean morbillivirus, and feline morbillivirus, are highly contagious pathogens and can cause serious human and animal diseases.

Biosecurity typically focuses most intensely on breeding herd facilities. A group of researchers from Iowa State University, led by Dr. Derald Holtkamp, is looking into growing-pig site biosecurity gaps by following PRRS, PEDV and PDCoV infections and investigating a regional Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae (APP) outbreak. Initial findings are shared in a recent report. More analysis of the data containing red flags is ongoing but Dr. Holtkamp cautioned, “If we ever get ASF or another FAD in the US, and we don’t detect it very, very early, it’s going to spread because of a lack of ability to prevent transmission from one herd to another.”

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

A project to evaluate technologies to prevent the spread of infectious bioaerosols is making progress. Led by Dr. Montse Torremorell at the University of Minnesota, the project is identifying existing and emerging technologies across different industries for their ability to contain bioaerosols in the face of swine disease outbreaks. Next steps will be to research feasibility and cost effectiveness of potential biocontainment technologies.

In October 2020, diagnostic laboratory sequencing of lung tissue from a US pig revealed the presence of canine parvovirus 2 (CPV2). The unexpected detection of CPV2 was assumed to be an incidental finding in lung tissue lacking significant lesions and not a contributor to disease. However, since this was the first known detection of CPV2 in swine, SHIC funded research to determine if CPV2 may be an emerging disease risk to US swine.