Antimicrobial use in wean to market pigs in the United States

Today, we are sharing a publication from Drs. Davies and Singer regarding antimicrobial use in wean-to-market pigs in the United States based on self-reported data from swine producers and veterinarians. This work is published in Zoonoses and Public Health in open access.

Impacts

Demonstrates the feasibility of obtaining data on antimicrobial use in the United States swine industry through sharing of proprietary records within industry.
Provides the first substantial description of antimicrobial use in United States swine beyond annual sales and distribution data.
Indicates that specific metrics of antibiotic use that focus on conditions within individual industries will be most useful to advance stewardship.

Susceptibility of swine cells and domestic pigs to SARS-CoV-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.

Dr. Meekins and his team shared their latest results regarding how susceptible domestic pigs and cultured swine cells are to SARS-CoV2.

Key points

Cultured swine cells are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, but domestic pigs are resistant to infection.
Pigs are unlikely to be carriers of SARS-CoV-2 or relevant pre-clinical animal models for the development of COVID-19 vaccines or therapeutics.

What is new regarding swine central nervous system diseases?

Podcasts are a perfect way to get caught up with new swine information! We are presenting you the latest episode from “At The Meeting… Honoring Dr. Bob Morrison” in collaboration with SwineCast.

Characterization of Broadly Neutralizing Antibodies to PRRSV

This week, Dr. Jordan Young from the late Dr. Murtaugh‘s lab shares his latest research project regarding the immune response against PRRS.

Key point

PRRSV antibodies were determined to be broadly binding, but only homologously neutralizing, suggesting a polyclonal response, involving multiple PRRSV specific antibodies might be necessary for PRRSV neutralization.
This means that vaccinations aiming to protect from infection likely need to involve exposure to multiple strains of PRRSV to induce a broad protective immunity, rather than relying on single-strain vaccines.

Focusing on the grow/finish stages of production to better control PRRS, the new challenge of the swine industry?

Should we redirect our research efforts to focus on PRRS prevention and control in growing and finishing pigs? This was the call for action made by Dr. Montse Torremorell, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota when she opened the special session “Grow/finish phase of production: What are we learning and implications for making progress on PRRS control.” sponsored by Boehringer Ingelheim during the North American PRRS Symposium this past weekend in Chicago. Torremorell argued that if the swine industry wants to advance regional PRRS control, more emphasis needs to put on preventing and controlling PRRS in growing pigs.