The Swine Health Information Center is drawing the attention of pork producers to an increase in the number of samples testing positive for a 144 strain of PRRS. As part of its monthly newsletter the Swine Health Information Center has released its domestic and global swine disease surveillance reports for February.
SHIC Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg says the health of the U.S. swine herd is stable and, with the exception of reports of a nasty subtype of the 144 strain of PRRS, there haven't been any major issues.
Clip-Dr. Paul Sundberg-Swine Health Information Center:
There’s been an overall decrease in the number of PRRS cases that the veterinary diagnostic labs have found. That's good. It's still at the seasonal winter levels so it's fairly high.
Overall, the decrease is mostly in the wean to market area so that is also a good sign because, with PRRS especially, those wean to market finishing floors can serve as nidus for infection back to sow farms. So overall we're doing fairly well with PRRS right now.
There is a strain that is a 144 strain with a 1-C lineage is what it's called so it's kind of a sub-class of that 144 strain and that's causing some significant problems in the Midwest. It's a very hot type of PRRS and we just finished a webinar with a lot of information about this diagnosis and what's going on on the farms and biosecurity.
I would encourage everyone to go onto the Swine Health Information Center web site, swinehealth.org, because that webinar is recorded and it's available one the swinehealth.org web site so there's some PRRS information that might be of interest.
Source : Farmscape