swine – Swine in Minnesota

Farm management practices associated with influenza contamination of people working in swine farms

We hope all our US readers had a great Memorial Day weekend. Today, we are talking about farm practices and flu in farm workers. This recent publication from the Torremorell lab is available in open access on the Porcine Health Management journal website.

Take-away points

Naïve piglets becoming infected with influenza before weaning participates in the endemic status of sow farms.
Numerous interactions between piglets and farm workers happen pre-weaning (e.g. processing, vaccinations)
Between 16% and 94% of the samples taken post-activity from farm workers’ hands and clothing were PCR positive for influenza.
Activities during the peri-weaning period had almost 6 times higher risk of flu detection.

Summary: The evaluation of an artificial intelligence system for estrus detection in sows

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, researchers Steven Verhoeven, Ilias Chantziaras, Elise Bernaerdt , Michel Loicq , Ludo Verhoeven and Dominiek Maes share the results of a study done on the accuracy of estrus detectus using AI technology on three commercial Belgian farms.

U of M researchers lead major African swine fever breakthrough

University of Minnesota researchers recently led successful efforts to work on African swine fever virus (ASFV), developing and validating a surrogate virus for ASFV that will help develop effective mitigation strategies to control ASFV and keep it from entering North America. The disease has devastated pig populations and pork production in countries around the world.

Market Lows Causing Concern: A podcast

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.

Dr. Steve Meyer (Lead Economist, Partners for Production Agriculture) joins the At the Meeting team to discuss the outlook for current low pig prices. Lower demand and increasing costs will make 2023 a difficult year, but Meyer says it is important to remember the advantages U.S. pork producers enjoy.

Wait and see? Biosecurity decision-making under disease risk – Part 2

In the previous science page, Gabriela Bucini, Scott C. Merrill, Eric M. Clark, and Julie M. Smith of the Social Ecological Gaming and Simulation Lab at the University of Vermont shared that the decisions made by the players in different scenarios of disease risk, risk communication strategies, and neighboring farm biosecurity implementation allowed us to identify three prominent behavioral groups. The risk tolerant players invested very little in biosecurity in contrast to risk averse players who invested consistently throughout the simulation to protect their farms. Our third category, risk opportunists, primarily invested in biosecurity during high risk scenarios but limited investments during rounds with lower chance of infection.