spread – Swine in Minnesota

Yes, science should inform policy, but how?

By Kaitlyn St. Charles, Carol Cardona, Timothy Goldsmith, Cesar Corzo and Marie Culhane, University of Minnesota

Stop movement orders are a big deal for all production phases, particularly for live pigs, but also for semen movements from boar studs to breeding farms.

In the United States, animal agriculture is having to make tough decisions about the quickly spreading and far-reaching diseases caused by H5 2.3.4.4b influenza A virus (USDA 2024). There have been substantial organized efforts to control H5 2.3.4.4b IAV in domestic poultry, because it is the cause of highly pathogenic avian influenza with severe illness and high death loss in infected flocks. So, it should be no surprise that efforts need to be made to control virus spread in other species, including humans.

Chasing a moving target

Rapid evolution, molecular surveillance of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus.

By Kim VanderWaal, Nakarin Pamornchainavakul, Cesar A. Corzo, Mariana Kikuti, Albert Rovira and Igor Paploski, University of Minnesota

When talking to practitioners, they will tell you that porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome control feels like a moving target. Despite ever-growing investments aimed at preventing between-farm spread, PRRS incidence at the national scale remains relatively steady year-over-year. However, underneath this apparent steady-state, epidemic-like spread events occur every few years with the emergence of novel genetic variants (Figure 1). For instance, the Lineage 1A 1-7-4 virus (blue line) emerged in ~2014 and rapidly spread throughout the country.

Tracking between-farm PRRSV-2 transmission and its potential routes through the virus genetic relationship and farm-based data

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.

In this week’s Science Page University of Minnesota researchers Nakarin Pamornchainavakul, Dennis N. Makau, Igor A. D. Paploski, Cesar A. Corzo and Kimberly VanderWaal take a look at the spread of different variants of PRRS between farms.