Research conducted on behalf of the Swine Health Information Center has demonstrated the contribution of multiple unmeasured routes of PRRS transmission to outbreaks of the infection. Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome is the number one pathogen causing production losses in the U.S. and it's used as an example for analysing and controlling emerging diseases.
Swine Health Information Center Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg explains researchers with North Carolina State University and the University of Minnesota looked at modes of PRRS transmission between farms to create a mathematical model to determine their contribution to PRRS outbreaks.
Clip-Dr. Paul Sundberg-Swine Health Information Center:
What it showed was that pig movements and farm proximity were the main PRRS transmission routes regardless of the different farm types whether it was nurseries, sows, finishers, pig movements and area spread proximity was the main route.
However, vehicles transporting pigs to farms, especially were important and explained a large proportion of the infections, especially on the sow farms and the finishers so there's transport biosecurity that you have to pay attention to as well. Feed represented the highest risk of transport in vehicles compared to the others.
The feed transport explained about 85 percent of the infections on farms, which is a good amount. It's a very high amount and that's another illustration of the issue of transport biosecurity. The issues of animal by-products and feed transmission, they were fairly limited and fairly low but still an opportunity for PRRS to be transmitted.
Source : Farmscape