By RICK A. RICHARDS
Indiana Correspondent INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Indiana’s long-dormant Swine Health Advisory Committee is being reactivated by the state’s Board of Animal Health (BOAH) to find answers to the growing threat of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).
The disease is apparently becoming more prevalent in Indiana, particularly in the northern part of the state, according to information provided by Denise Derrer, public information officer for BOAH.
“Right now we don’t know how prevalent it is, which is why we’re re-activating the Swine Health Advisory Committee,” said Derrer. The committee hasn’t been active since a pseudorabies outbreak in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The committee came up with a plan and method to eradicate pseudorabies in Indiana, which was deadly to piglets.
Bret D. Marsh, Indiana state veterinarian, said PRRS is responsible for a variety of ailments among pigs from coughing to stillbirths. PRRS has no known impact on humans. While the disease can run its course and not kill an infected animal, it can cause breathing and reproductive problems.
For instance, there has been one news account that a PRRS outbreak on a farm in Tippecanoe County in 2009 caused 270 aborted pigs and killed 30 sows.
Marsh said the virus has become “a significant health threat to swine herds” in Indiana and around the country, and that it has been particularly difficult to eradicate because it is constantly mutating. Because of that, researchers have not been able to come up with a vaccine that would prevent its spread.
“Since we last hosted a PRRS meeting five or six years ago, we have seen many changes in the industry, in research and in the regulatory side of things to indicate now is the time to re-evaluate how we handle this disease,” said Marsh. “Those changes put Indiana in a position to be an industry leader.”
Finding an answer to combat PRRS is important in Indiana because the state is the nation’s fifth largest pork producer, contributing more than $3 billion to the economy. The pork industry marketed 8 million pigs last year, and employs more than 13,000 Hoosiers.
The PRRS virus was first isolated in 1991, but its symptoms were present as early as the mid-1980s when it was known as “mystery swine disease.” Once present, it may take PRRS up to a year to infect an entire herd, although it could take as little as four or five months, depending of the virulence of the strain.
While there has been some thought that confined feeding and breeding operations by pork producers has contributed the spread of the disease, research has shown that PRRS infects both small and large herds, regardless of whether they are confined indoors or left to roam outdoors.
On Feb. 1, BOAH met at the Indiana State Fairgrounds with members of the pork industry, including commercial growers, seed stock producers, packers and pharmaceutical suppliers, to talk about ways to address PRRS.
“Indiana has a unique combination of tools that cannot be found anywhere else in the United States,” said Marsh. “No other state has the ability to locate premises, match them to their production systems and cross reference the sites with laboratory results to map pockets of infection and identify risk. The technology that we’ve recently acquired can be a game-changer for the Hoosier pork industry.”
The attention on PRRS comes at a time no one knows precisely how the disease is spread, said Derrer. “It is a reportable disease to BOAH, but it isn’t actionable by BOAH. Frankly, we don’t want to put our producers at a disadvantage to other pork-producing states.”
In other words, Derrer said Indiana doesn’t want to clamp down on the production and marketing of pigs while other states don’t have similar restrictions.
“There are a lot of unknowns right now,” said Derrer. “We don’t know how the disease is spread. Does it go from barn to barn by the wind? Is it carried from one place to another by people? Is it spread by insects? We don’t even know if it’s contained in the semen used in artificial insemination.”
For now, Derrer said BOAH doesn’t know how many cases exist in Indiana, but she added that producers are starting to contact the state with information on outbreaks.
After the Feb. 1 meeting, Derrer said the 50 people in attendance were broken into various committees to study PRRS. “They’re going to be asking producers if there is anything we can do to help,” said Derrer.
“We’ve heard that the problem is worse in northern Indiana than it is in the south, but we just don’t know because there are a lot of different strains to the virus,” said Derrer. Each strain acts differently and can cause different symptoms, which makes PRRS more difficult to eradicate.
For more information on the Swine Health Advisory Committee, contact BOAH at animalhealth@boah.in.gov or call 317-544-2400. |
