Farm-Scape is sponsored by Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork Play Audio Farm-Scape is a Wonderworks Canada production and is distributed courtesy of Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork.

Farm-Scape, Episode 1360

Researchers with the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization in Saskatoon hope to improve the efficiency of needle free delivery of the vaccines that protect livestock from disease.

A small pilot study, which VIDO completed earlier this year, shows the immune response in pigs vaccinated using the Agro-jet, a device which uses a blast of carbon dioxide gas to administer vaccine, to be equal to those vaccinated with a standard hypodermic needle.

Program Manager for Vaccine Development Dr. Phil Willson says needle free offers advantages ranging from faster processing of pigs to lower risk of disease transfer to enhanced safety for those working in the barn.

"I can't really speak to whether it's faster because we didn't have a large enough study group to really evaluate that but it clearly does not have the potential to transmit some of the virus diseases that there is concern about if one were to use the same needle in more than one pig.

There's been a number of problems reported with the PRRS virus being transmitted and this approach would eliminate that so it has that benefit. It also has the benefit of not producing a hazardous waste, a sharps waste, so the producer has that benefit as well.

We're quite interested in looking into the future possibility of getting more bang for your buck using less vaccine material.

As we tried to understand some of the process that's going on there, it was obvious that not as much vaccine really went into the pig so the next question we're going to look at is whether we can get effective immunity by using smaller does. That's the direction this research is going to take."

Dr. Willson says the pilot study offers evidence that needle free delivery can produce effective immunity and he's confident future work will also prove interesting.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.