In January 2014, Scott Dee made a shocking discovery that porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) could be transmitted in feed. Eight years later, the scientific journal, Transboundary and Emerging Diseases, released a special issue centered entirely on the topic of feed biosecurity. There’s no question the risk is real and poses concern for the U.S. swine industry. Since then, the knowledge around this risk has grown with study after study confirming what Dee discovered.
Here’s a round-up of a few stories that dig into this increasingly important topic in the U.S. pork industry.
Wake-Up Call: Pigs Contract Senecavirus A Through Imported Feed
For the first time ever, Senecavirus A (SVA) has been detected in feed ingredients imported from an endemically infected country that are potentially linked to cases of SVA in pigs from a historically negative national herd.
“This is one of the biggest pieces of news the pork industry has had in regard to disease control in many years,” says Scott Dee, director of research for Pipestone Applied Research, and co-author of a paper published in Transboundary and Emerging Diseases about this real-world proof that links virus transmission in feed to an outbreak of disease in swine.
Although a great amount of laboratory work has proven over and over again that viruses, including SVA, can survive well in feed, researchers have never had a real-world case where they could come to a strong conclusion that a new virus entered a country through feed imports, Dee explains.
“This is a wake-up call big time,” Dee says. “It turned out to be SVA – which isn’t that hard to deal with – but it easily could have been foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) or African swine fever (ASF). This country got lucky it was ‘only’ SVA and not one of the real bad boys.” Read the full story here.
The Role of Feed in Disease Spread: The Risk is Real
Protecting, improving and monitoring the health of animals has always been the goal of the veterinary profession. Along the way, veterinary medicine has discovered and identified many ways pathogens could enter animal populations, including infected breeding stock and semen, contaminated transport, fomites and aerosols. The result of these discoveries are science-based biosecurity protocols to reduce or eliminate these risks.
“The ability of feed and feed ingredients to serve as vehicles for the transport and transmission of viral pathogens is a new discovery, previously thought not to occur, and therefore ignored at the level of the classroom, the farm, government administration, global animal health organizations and elected officials,” Dee says. “It’s humbling to see this come full circle from a very early field observation that we proved scientifically could happen.” Read more here.
One of the Most Important Questions Every Pig Farmer Should Ask
Where does your feed come from? It’s one of the most important questions every pig farmer should ask their feed mill. Although feed biosecurity might not be as talked about in the pork industry, experts agree it should be a fundamental part of everyone’s biosecurity plan.
Studies have shown African swine fever (ASF) virus can survive in feed being shipped across the globe, but what happens when those feed ingredients arrive in the U.S.?
Megan Niederwerder, associate director of the Swine Health Information Center (SHIC), says that’s what makes a report recently published in the scientific journal Transboundary and Emerging Diseases so important. Learn more about the study here.
5 Tips for Winter Feed Mill Biosecurity
Fall and winter are typically the times of year we see swine viruses such as swine influenza, porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS), and porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) move across the U.S. Scott Dee and fellow researchers demonstrated in 2002 that fomites surrounded with snow and water could carry PRRS virus over 30 miles. Further research by others after the arrival of PED virus into the U.S. demonstrated the virus could travel in a similar fashion as PRRS virus.
Although it’s important to focus our biosecurity efforts on the farms, now is a good time of year to review important feed mill biosecurity in these five key areas, too. Find out how you can improve feed biosecurity on your farm.
