The Swine Health Information Center reports swine farms in the eastern U.S. states are now at imminent risk of contracting the PRRS Lineage 1C variant.
The Swine Health Information Center's domestic swine disease surveillance report, for March indicates the overall number of PRRS cases in February was about the same as in January.
SHIC Associate Director Dr. Megan Niederwerder says we saw increases in Kansas and Missouri and the PRRS Lineage 1C variant strain was detected in several states.
Clip-Dr. Megan Niederwerder-Swine Health Information Center:
We see that there is an increased risk of this PRRS Lineage 1C variant to eastern states.Historically we have seen that the Lineage 1C was primarily focussed in those Midwestern states.
We're now starting to see the Lineage 1C variant expand into those eastern states and really is considered an imminent risk for those states.The good news is that we don't have a lot of animal movements from the Midwest region to the eastern states but there are certainly equipment, including live haul equipment and trucks which could be possible carriers for this Lineage 1C variant of PRRS virus that are facilitating the dissemination into those eastern states.
It's going to be really important for those states that have high breeding herd volumes such as North Carolina, that those states do everything to maintain a negative status from PRRS Lineage 1C variant.
It'll be important to consider thinking about biosecurity and biocontainment approaches that are specific to truck washes, site cleaning and disinfection, feed mill as a risk and hauling trucks to think about reducing the risk of that Lineage 1C variant from spreading and affecting the breeding herd inventories that are in those eastern states.
Dr. Niederwerder notes a webinar at the end of February which focussed on new PRRS strains emerging in the U.S. and in Spain can be accessed through the Swine Health Information Center's web site at swinehealth.org.
Source : Farmscape.ca