February 2018 – Swine in Minnesota

49th AASV annual meeting: Come see us in San Diego!

San Diego skyline from Pt64 On Saturday starts the 49th annual meeting of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians in San Diego, CA. Once again, the swine group from the University of Minnesota, College of Veterinary Medicine will be well represented. This year’s theme is Global Knowledge: Individual Application.

Dr. Marie Culhane, member of this year’s program committee will also be co-chair a seminar on Sunday morning regarding the 4-dimensional revolution in food animal health and production: the synthesis of diagnostics, devices, digital platforms, and data analytics. Dr. Maria Pieters will co-chair the DVM student seminar hold on Sunday afternoon.

Numerous faculty member, graduate students, researchers and DVM students will be presenting throughout the conference.

Presenter	Topic	When	Session
Montse Torremorell	Comparison of aggregate/population samples to detect viruses in suckling pigs	Saturday, 2:05pm	Monitoring and Surveillance 2.0
Albert Rovira	Using Optisample to determine sample for specific needs	Saturday, 4:15pm	Monitoring and Surveillance 2.0
Montse Torremorell	Air filtration testing: understanding filter efficacy and leakage	Saturday, 1:25pm	Biosecurity
Juan Sanhueza	MSHMP	Sunday, 10:15am	The 4-dimensional revolution in food animal health and production
Jerri Torrison	PigSAVI	Sunday, 10:40am	The 4-dimensional revolution in food animal health and production
Fabio Vannucci	Diagnostic testing for challenging cases	Sunday, 9:15am	Diagnostics
Fabian Chamba Pardo	Breeding herd factors associated with influenza in piglets at weaning	Sunday, 9:15am	Research topics
Nirmala Jayaveeramuthu	Is influenza vaccination a key driver of influenza genetic diversity in piglets?	Sunday, 9:30am	Research topics
Jorge Garrido Mantilla	Novel approaches for influenza surveillance in swine breeding herds	Sunday, 9:45am	Research topics
Matthew Sturos	Shedding and persistence of Senecavirus A in boars	Sunday, 11:45am	Research topics
Zhen Yang	Geographic distribution and genetic diversity of PCV3 from clinical samples in US swine farms	Sunday, 4:15pm	Student seminar
Fernando Leite	The impact of zinc amino acid complex supplementation on the porcine response to subclinical Lawsonia intracellularis infection	Sunday, 1:15pm	Industrial Partners
Erika Vasquez	Comparison of IPMA and commercial blocking ELISA for Lawsonia intracellularis	Sunday, 3:00pm	Industrial Partners
Fabio Vannucci	Senecavirus A: pathologist/research perspective	Monday, 4:45pm	Emerging diseases
Peter Davies	Measuring antibiotic use in pork production: why, how, and for whom?	Tuesday, 10:30am	General session

Do not forget to take a look at the various posters we will be presenting!

Presenter	Topic	Poster #
Taylor Homann	Comparison of individual and pooled oral fluid samples, and Swiffer environmental samples of drinkers for the detection of IAV-S and PRRSV by PCR	12
Kevin Gustafson	In vitro culture of porcine B cells	26
Marjorie Schleper	Evaluation of farrowing stall sanitation protocols with ATP bioluminescence	37
Talita Resende	Co-detection of PCV2 and PCV3 in pig samples	64
Juan Sanhueza	Factors that impact PRRS time to stability	65
Frances Shepherd	Phenotypic relationship and hypervariability of the VP7 gene in porcine rotavirus B and C	66
Shaoyuan Tan	Benchmarking pen-side sequencing for infectious disease diagnosis	67
Carles Vilalta	Model to estimate PRRSV introduction in filtered farms with negative pressure	72

Hope to see you there!

Science Page: Prevalence comparison among different MSHMP cohorts

This is our Friday rubric: every week a new Science Page from the Bob Morrison’s Swine Health Monitoring Project. The previous editions of the science page are available on our website.

This week, we are sharing a report from the MSHMP team regarding the differences in PRRS prevalence among various cohorts.

Key points:

Prevalence among cohorts does not differ.
Seasonal patterns can be seen in different cohorts located in different regions.

Prevalence PRRS status cohort A comparison from a prevalence standpoint between the cohort of farms belonging to the 13 systems participating at the start of the MSHMP (CS) and the cohort of farms from systems that joined the program later (CL), was performed with the objective of assessing whether the patterns between cohorts compare.

As seen in Figure 1–CS, there was a clear shift towards more use of MLV over LVI for sow herd stability purposes. The proportion of farms using LVI in the CS versus the CL is 5% and 10%, respectively. When assessing the proportion of farms in each AASV PRRS category (Holtkamp et al., 2011) both groups are comparable (Table 1). Also the temporal pattern of infection can be seen in both cohorts as described by Tousignant et al (2014).

In summary, both cohorts of farms (CS versus CL) yield similar results which continue to highlight the robustness of the program and the representativeness of the systems contributing to this program.

Best of Leman 2017 series #5: J. Pittman – We’ve posted a lot of sows.

We launched a new series on the blog in October. Once a month, we are sharing with you a presentation given at the 2017 Allen D. Leman swine conference, on topics that the swine group found interesting, innovative or that lead to great discussions.

The fifth presentation we are sharing is from Dr. Jeremy Pittman from Smithfield’s, NC. In the context of increased sow mortality, Dr. Pittman spent a lot of time investigating the root causes of this change and he shares his experience in this talk.

To listen to this talk, please click on the picture below.

Science Page: Investigating the role of the environment and the lactating sow in PRRSV infections during an outbreak (Part 2)

This is our Friday rubric: every week a new Science Page from the Bob Morrison’s Swine Health Monitoring Project. The previous editions of the science page are available on our website.

This week, we are sharing part 2 of the report on the role of the environment and the lactating sow in PRRSV outbreak. You may find part 1 of the report here.

Key Points:

PRRS virus can be detected in the environment of the farrowing house (surfaces and air) and on the udder skin of lactating sows. However, PRRSV detection in the environment decreases as time after an outbreak increases.
PRRSV was not detected in the environment after 4 months of an outbreak
Role of environmental PRRSV in the transmission of the disease is still unknown.

In this study, udder and surface wipes as well as particle deposition wipes were collected both at processing and at weaning, starting 2 weeks after the PRRSV outbreak.

PRRS sampling udder wipes surface wipes particle deposition

Results showed that PRRSV was detected at processing up to 14 weeks after the outbreak in surfaces and udder skin of lactating sows. At weaning, PRRSV was detected up to 17 weeks post-outbreak using udder skin wipes. The number of positive samples decreased over time and the Ct values of the positive samples increased over time indicating a decrease in infection load overtime. Detection of airborne particle deposition positive samples followed a similar pattern to those of the crate surfaces and udder wipes. Virus could be isolated and sequenced from all sample types.

Udder skin and environment may play a role in the transmission and maintenance of PRRSV in piglets in breeding herds; however further research is needed to validate this observation.

Swine Global Surveillance Project Issues First Reports

The University of Minnesota Swine Group and the Center for Animal Health and Food Safety (CAHFS) have partnered with the Swine Health Information Center (SHIC) to develop and implement a system for near real time global surveillance of swine diseases. The output of the system is the identification of hazards that are subsequently scored using a step-wise procedure of screening, to identify increments in hazards that, potentially, may represent a risk for the US.

The first version of the system is now live, with the first three reports available, including data from November 5, 2017 to January 14, 2018.

Beginning in early March the tool will be available for spontaneous reporting by stakeholders, such as producers and practitioners both overseas and in the United States. During the first year of the project, the system will be developed and beta-tested for USDA-classified tier 1 reportable foreign animal swine diseases (ASF, CSF, FMD), but in the future more diseases will be tracked.

“As we have learned in recent years, we need to pay attention to external health threats as part of our overall risk management. Keeping tabs on global trends is a prudent investment,” said Dr. Jerry Torrison, Director of the University of Minnesota Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory.

From the most recent report, December 18, 2017 – January 14, 2018:

The current concern continues to focus on African swine fever in Poland and surrounding countries. Infected wild boars continue to be identified in the vicinity surrounding Warsaw, and the possibility of spread of the disease to the pig intensive area of eastern Poland continues to be a concern. Countries in the region are using a combination of increased hunting of wild boar along with boar proof fencing along borders to attempt to control the spread of the disease.

Visit z.umn.edu/SwineGlobalSurveillance to access the reports, and coming soon, to use the tool to provide spontaneous reporting.