Earlier this month, US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced a new Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus programme, which includes mandatory reporting of the disease.

Dr Tom Burkgren, the executive director of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians, says one of the remarkable things he has seen has been an openness among producers and veterinarians to share information.

Dr Tom Burkgren - American Association of Swine Veterinarians:

One of the big pieces of information that is important with this is to look at what control methods are working, what biosecurity is working and there's a couple of different levels that information has been transferred at.

What we call the swine vine is out there and is very active with veterinarians talking to other veterinarians, sometimes just on an informal basis, other times on a more formalized basis within the AASV.

There's a lot of things that have been tried and are being tried and just looking at success rates with those methods is a really important piece of information and so one thing that AASV has been trying to do is facilitate that discussion trying to get veterinarians to communicate what works and what hasn't worked.

I think probably the one positive thing that we've seen from PED has been the ability for the AASV and the National Pork Board and the National Pork Producers Council to work together on this disease.
There's been a lot of work done collaboratively and in really a mode of cooperation that has placed us where we are today.

Dr Burkgren says it is unprecedented to see as much communication as we have seen on PED. He says when neighbours are talking to neighbours it goes a long way.