Introduction

Lee Whittington, Manager of Information Services at the Centre notes, "We have assembled leading speakers on the disease and Circo virus, the main causative agent, to address the defenses available to pork producers in protecting their herds, identifying the problem in the barn since many pork producers will have not seen it yet, and some of the solutions available to deal with the problem including new vaccination programs." Dr. Frank Marshall, a swine practitioner from Camrose, Alberta will lead off the program documenting what the disease is and where to look for it in the barn.

Dr. John Harding, Associate Professor at the Western College of veterinary medicine in Saskatoon and one of the speakers on the program comments on the disease "PCV2 certainly has some unique characteristics and outcomes that have not been fully understood from a scientific point of view. This only reemphasizes the importance of control and prevention strategies that focus on control of concurrent diseases in the herd and the use of PCV2 vaccines if available."

Dr. Francois Joisel, our keynote international speaker and a researcher with Merial in France will be addressing the area of vaccine development and how this recent advancement in vaccine technology can be added to the pork producer's defense strategy.

Dr. Harding reminds pork producers across Canada "Until further research and experience can help us to determine with some certainty what are the factors which cause this disease to devastate production in one herd and hardly impact performance in another herd we need to use all the tools available to us to limit any disease entry into the barn and minimize the impact of concurrent diseases that may already exist in the barn."

Registration for the conference can be made by phone 306-373-9922, fax 306-955-2510, or email [email protected]

ThePigSite News Desk - 22nd March 2006