National Hog Farmer – Page 2 – Swine in Minnesota

Minnesota Pork health initiative: Eliminating Mhp

In 2024, the board of directors of the Minnesota Pork Board adopted five foundational strategic pillars, one of which is the enhancement of animal well-being. Intrinsic to animal well-being are animal health, disease prevention and ultimately, disease elimination from pig populations.

With the leadership and directive of Minnesota Pork, a working group was tasked with providing direction and guidance with the goal of arriving at an action plan consistent with the goals under the foundational pillar of animal well-being. The recommendation from this group was for Minnesota pork producers to lead the nation in the elimination of the endemic disease, and to pursue the goal of the elimination of Mycoplasma hyopneumiae at the state level. From this beginning, the Minnesota Animal Health Task Force was created and has provided the leadership and direction, including the submission of a resolution to the US Swine Health Improvement Plan with subsequent approval by the House of Delegates, for the creation of a working group to explore the potential for certifying Mhp within the program.

40-farm study reveals swine mortality site virus risk

Swine mortality, particularly those caused by infectious pathogens, poses biosecurity risks and causes significant economic impact. Dead handling structures may act as sources of viral environmental contamination, but limited attention has been given to their role in biocontainment and bioexclusion of pathogens in and around farms. In this study, we tried to diminish this problem by assessing the environmental contamination around dead animal disposal structures in wean-to-finish farms and determining if the contamination levels differ according to how dead animals are managed.

PRRSV variants under monitoring

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus is a major threat to pig production worldwide. The virus is constantly changing, with new variants appearing every year. Some of these new variants can spread more easily or have a greater impact on your herd’s health and productivity. An example is the emergence of a new PRRSV variant named 1C.5 (previously referred to as L1C 1-4-4, or 1-4-4) in late 2020. In the past, monitoring systems have had a difficulty identifying new variants like this quickly enough to allow for a rapid response, and they often focused on describing epidemics that had already happened.

Veterinary team targets FAD hotspots to protect U.S. livestock

CAHFS researcher Jesper Chia-Hui Hsu interviews a local farmer

A single outbreak of a foreign animal disease—whether foot-and-mouth disease, African swine fever, or peste des petits ruminants—can bring a nation’s livestock industry to a grinding halt. These viruses are fast-moving, hard to control, and devastating to animal health and rural economies alike. Infected animals may suffer painful symptoms or die. Even in countries where the diseases are not currently found, the threat looms large: trade restrictions, emergency culling, and lost market access can trigger billions in losses.

Does vaccination influence PRRSV evolution?

RFLP 1-7-4, variant 1C.5 (aka L1C-4-4), or 1C.5.32 – these are some of the infamous PRRSV-2 viruses that have caused massive production losses over the past decade. Regardless of how people named or classified them, one thing these epidemic waves had in common was that they were caused by genetic variants that were novel at the time, and vaccination, especially widely used modified-live virus commercial vaccines, failed to mitigate their spread. Many viruses are in an arms-race with host immunity, evolving to evade host immune mechanisms. The less-than-perfect available immunization strategies combined with the expanding genetic diversity seen for PRRSV-2 raises the question:

Does the use of MLV vaccines play a role in shaping wild-type PRRSV-2 evolution, potentially driving the emergence of new variants?

A newly published paper from the University of Minnesota¹ attempted to answer that question in a controlled experimental setting to compare the evolution of PRRSV-2 through pig-to-pig infection chains under different MLV vaccination conditions.