Pork Industry Battling New Diseases From Well-Known Virus

US - The U.S. pork industry is looking for answers to a new danger. A cluster of ailments linked to the circovirus has recently emerged. Known collectively as porcine circovirus associated diseases, or PCVAD, they have the potential to seriously impact pork production.
calendar icon 5 April 2007
clock icon 2 minute read

That's according to Dr. Paul Sundberg, Vice President of Science and Technology for the National Pork Board. He told Brownfield this week that PCVAD can cause very severe losses.

"It can very much affect production in the finisher with death losses fairly high - 20, 30, 40% death losses," Sundberg said.

Perhaps even more troubling, Sundberg said, is that it's still not clear why or even how the age-old circovirus is contributing to a new spate of hog diseases. And he said the Pork Checkoff is working hard to find answers to a whole host of questions about PCVAD.

"We need to know more about the epidemiology of this virus," said Sundberg. "We need to know more about how it's transmitted between pigs, about its interaction with the pig, about its interaction with other things, other bacteria or viruses," he added. "There are a lot of questions and that leads to some frustration because we don't always have the good answers."

Source: Brownfield

© 2000 - 2024 - Global Ag Media. All Rights Reserved | No part of this site may be reproduced without permission.