U.S. Pork Organizations Step Up Focus on Feral Swine

The U.S. swine sector in partnership with government are stepping up efforts to ensure the risk posed to commercial pork producers by feral swine can be minimised

by Bruce Cochrane – FarmScape Online

USDA estimates there are six million feral swine in the U.S. creating issues for traditional livestock production, natural resources, and other species.

The Swine Health Information Center, American Association of Swine Veterinarians, National Pork Board, and National Pork Producers Council in partnership with USDA Wildlife Services have launched an imitative aimed at addressing pork sector concerns related to feral swine.

Swine Health Information Center Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg says we continue to communicate the importance of biosecurity to keep the feral pigs away from your commercial pigs.

“We don’t have it in commercial pigs and that’s a very important issue because that could be a trade issue”

 

“That’s an extremely important thing because the feral pigs will carry a variety of different diseases. For example pseudorabies virus is one that we know is endemic within the feral pig population.

“We don’t have it in commercial pigs and that’s a very important issue because that could be a trade issue. We eradicated pseudorabies in the 1990s and the early 2000s in the U.S. It was a long costly battle for the U.S. pork producer and we want to make sure that that doesn’t come back.

“There are different strains of pseudorabies and there’s a specific strain in feral pigs that isn’t as pathogenic as the one we eradicated but is more of the underlying percolating type of pseudorabies. We don’t want that in our commercial pigs at all and biosecurity is extremely important.

“The other thing that feral pigs carry, we know that it has, is swine brucellosis and that’s a zoonotic disease. People that go out and hunt feral pigs or try to process them can be at risk of brucellosis.”

Dr. Sundberg says these are the types of things we know are out there and we want to do the control programs that will help protect not only commercial herds but also people from these types of diseases.

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