April 2020 – Page 2 – Swine in Minnesota

MSHMP during COVID-19

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.

Today, the MSHMP team is giving an update on how things are handled during the current situation.

Practical recommendations to prevent COVID-19 in farm workers and allied industries

Dr. Montse Torremorell gave a webinar for the National Pork Board yesterday, sharing practical guidelines to protect workers in the swine industry from COVID-19. Below are the slides from her presentation for your convenience, her contact information are included at the end, should you wish to reach out to Dr. Torremorell.

What is new regarding swine central nervous system diseases?

Thank you for your interest in this archived blog post. The link below may not work anymore, but you can access older episodes of “At the Meeting” at the podcast’s website!

Illegal importation of pork products from China into Japan

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 summary of a publication of Lei et al. regarding the illegal importation of pork products coming from China into Japan, especially in the context of African Swine Fever.

Key Points

Importation of infected pork and contaminated pork products is a known source of disease introduction into naive countries.
A study was conducted to assess the risk of disease introduction through illegal pork imports and to identify factors affecting perception and behavior regarding illegal imports.
A significant association between perception of difficulty of importing a pork product in their luggage, knowledge of illegality, and actual illegal importation was found.
Compared to an earlier survey, the results from this suggest that government education and enforcement measures have made a measurable impact

German researchers show pigs, chickens not susceptible to SARS-CoV2

A recent report from the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Federal Research Institute for Animal Health showed that animal species have a different sensitivity towards SARS-CoV2. Pigs and chickens have been shown to be less susceptible than ferrets or fruit bats.