Kevin Stuckey, sow division manager for Cooper Farms in Oakwood, Ohio, admits his company has had its fair share of issues with porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) lately. He sees the toll it takes on the pigs, the employees and the bottom line.
“I see how PRRS takes away from our managers’ ability to manage the farms daily,” Stuckey says. “It’s not just about the disease, but it’s also what we expect from employees regarding biosecurity, the toll it puts on them and their team.”
Instead of trying to throw more layers of biosecurity at his team, Stuckey can’t help but wonder if there is more that could be done as an industry to keep the disease away from farms in the first place. After getting more involved with the Ohio Pork Council and seeing progress around national swine health programs, he was encouraged that he’s not alone in feeling that way about diseases like PRRS.
“You don’t ever get used to PRRS,” Stuckey says. “We’re trained to be caretakers. Even after the animals get a little better and start to push their way through PRRS, it’s still tough. It still changes how you do things. It still changes how you go about your day-to-day operations and it has a long-lasting effect on you.”
To put it simply, pork producers have had enough with this virus.
A Costly Problem
In 2024 the National Pork Board funded a refresh on the economic impact of PRRS, and the results were discouraging.
Data shows PRRS results in more than $1.2 billion per year in lost productivity and efficiency in the U.S. alone. Since the mid-1980s, this virus has been present in the U.S. swine herd and continues to be a major threat to the pork industry.
“After 40 years of experience fighting this virus, veterinarians and producers are still losing the battle against PRRS,” says Iowa State University’s Derald Holtkamp, professor of veterinary diagnostic and production animal medicine, who conducted the analysis.
For the past six years, the global pork industry has dealt with increasing outbreaks of African swine fever (ASF) throughout the world. ASF is a foreign animal disease impacting pigs only, and it almost always results in mortality. Because this would be devastating to the U.S. pork industry, the National Pork Board took a deep dive into foreign animal disease preparedness and specifically how to keep ASF out of the U.S.
This all came on the heels of the development of the Swine Health Information Center (SHIC) in 2015 in response to the porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) outbreak in the U.S. The mission of SHIC is to focus on emerging diseases or diseases that are popping up in other parts of the world that could become a threat to the U.S.
During this time, focus shifted away from endemic diseases that are constantly present like PRRS and PED, says Dusty Oedekoven, chief veterinarian for the National Pork Board.
“We’ve made a lot of progress in some of the priorities the industry had established for preparedness,” Oedekoven says. “We have many on-farm tools and resources available to help producers prepare for and prevent foreign animal disease. But producers are now saying, ‘Yes, we need to prepare for foreign animal disease, but what are we doing about our endemic diseases that are challenging the industry every day?’”
Oedekoven says there are a number of causes of morbidity and mortality for the U.S. pork industry.
“If you look across all academic institutions and organizations, federal research grants and the waterfront of things from a swine health perspective, there’s a lot of good work being done,” he says. “But it’s been a while since the industry came together and identified priorities for swine health.”
Producers Call for a National Swine Health Strategy
On March 14, several state-level pork associations submitted an advisement to the National Pork Board at the National Pork Forum. The organizations made the following motion at the National Pork Industry Forum to develop a National Swine Health Strategy.
The Minnesota Pork Board, Illinois Pork Producers Association, Ohio Pork Council, Indiana Pork, and Missouri Pork Association moves for the development of a producer-led National Swine Health Strategy by the National Pork Board. An update regarding the progress in developing the National Swine Health Strategy is to be provided by the National Pork Board to delegates at the 2026 Pork Forum.
“We think this is a good place to start,” Oedekoven says. “It’s a producer-led collaborative effort across both national organizations and the state pork associations, to gather insights from producers about what swine health issues they’re facing. Then, they will convene a group of producer leaders to establish the priorities we can use to put their investment dollars to work the best we can to help improve swine health.”
When this advisement came forward, Stuckey had to step back and think about it.
“We are putting so much effort at the farm level, throwing all this biosecurity and investment at the farm,” Stuckey says. “I think we need to take a further step back and make sure that we’re investing the same amount into trying to eliminate some of these threats and reduce that overall pressure of bringing disease to the farm.”
He supported this advisement because he thinks the industry needs one group to coordinate efforts so the industry isn’t duplicating processes, research or energy.
“Let’s make sure we’re spending the right focus on it,” he says. “We try to keep it out of our farms, but let’s keep that disease from even getting to our farm.”
A United Effort
Can PRRS and PED be eliminated? That’s a question on many minds with many different answers. But Stuckey thinks progress can be made. Maybe the efforts won’t result in elimination tomorrow, but maybe it could for the next generation. Coming together around a common approach is important, he says.
There’s no shortage of work being done to better understand swine disease in the U.S. Although there may be gaps, Oedekoven thinks the National Swine Health Strategy will help identify gaps, prioritize what needs to be done next and ultimately guide the work that will best benefit the industry.
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