It’s one thing to have extensive data. It’s another thing to have collaboration. One of the most powerful tools available to producers and veterinarians today is the Swine Disease Reporting System (SDRS) that represents over 96% of the swine disease samples that are submitted by veterinarians and producers across the U.S. The SDRS is a project administered by Iowa State University Diagnostic Laboratory with data submitted by a coalition of six veterinary diagnostic laboratories (VDLs).
“All of the data is collated and anonymized, but also allows users to look at regional prevalence of disease,” says Megan Niederwerder, executive director of the Swine Health Information Center (SHIC). “The SDRS includes nine endemic pathogens that we face in the U.S., including porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS), porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), porcine deltacoronavirus, influenza and more.”
The SDRS allows veterinarians and producers to look at disease reports on a monthly basis, but also on a daily dashboard.
“This allows you to understand not only what’s going on throughout the industry, but also at a state level, looking at the seasonality of some of these pathogens,” she says. “We anticipate that PRRS should go down in the spring. We anticipate that PRRS will go up in the fall. With the SDRS, you can look and see if the prevalence is within the expected range or which population is the most positive. It also allows you to look at the prevalence rate over time.”
Looking at the Hard Questions
The SDRS data for April and May shows the PRRS prevalence was higher than what was expected. There were also some significant increases in the L1C.5 variant that’s being detected.
“We saw that PRRS continued to be detected at higher rates than what we were anticipating for the spring,” Niederwerder says. “That can allow us to see if there is a difference in the genome sequence or in the strain that’s being detected or if it is spreading more readily across the industry.”
To take this a step further, Lisa Becton, DVM, SHIC associate director, says the data is also validated on a monthly basis by an advisory group consisting of veterinarians in the field.
“Each month, when the SDRS team provides the initial results, the advisory group goes through it and can signify ‘yes, we’re seeing this in our area,’ or ‘no, we’re not.’ They also provide insights about what is going on in the field clinically,” Becton says. “We not only have the objective data from the VDLs, but we have that additional input from producers across the US, highlighting what they’re seeing and potential reasons why.”
Making More Informed Practices
Those additional insights are a unique feature of this domestic report, Becton says. Being able to combine the data with field observations makes the SDRS a valuable tool for pork producers. The advisory group uses this information to make suggestions for producers to consider.
“A couple of the risk factors that the advisory group highlighted over the last two months with the increase in PRRS were thinking about manure hauling practices and the risk of spreading PRRS,” Niederwerder explains. “When you think about manure handling, manure pumping, manure spreading on crops, we have to think about the risk for the spread of endemic diseases.”
Another point the advisory group mentioned was the high winds this spring. Could those winds have impacted the PRRS spread, as well as the contamination of transport vehicles with regards to PEDV?
“There are several things we can ascertain from the strict data, looking at what the advisory group observes in the field and how they interpret it,” Niederwerder says. “But the other aspect is that we report out which states have higher than expected prevalence of disease. Let’s say you’re in a swine producing state that’s adjacent to a state that seems to be having an increase in PRRS virus. You may rethink how you transport pigs. You may incorporate more biosecurity practices. You may consider how animal caretakers move from one site to the next, and how you can mitigate that risk based on the regionality of the specific disease prevalence.”
Niederwerder says the data also indicates that wean-to-finish hog operations typically have higher disease prevalence than the sow breeding farm.
“Those higher PRRS and PEDV levels inform our industry where our biosecurity practices could really make a difference,” Niederwerder adds. “If we were able to apply some of the biosecurity practices from the sow breeding farms into nursery and grow finish, we could really make an impact on that overall disease pressure across the industry.“
Becton also points out that there are visual components of the SDRS that allow users to look at disease prevalence by state.
“For example, if you’re going to take your pigs from Tennessee to Iowa, and you know that state has a high influenza, high PRRS prevalence, you may decide with your veterinarian to vaccinate to try to mitigate potential infection,” Becton says. “The visual images of disease activity can help inform people of hot spots of concern versus areas that may or may not be as active for diseases.”
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