Feed Mill connection to PDCoV outbreak examined

The Swine Health Information Center is encouraging pork producers to question their feed suppliers about biosecurity protocols and sources of feed ingredients

As part of research conducted by Kansas State University on behalf of the Swine Health Information Center, two feed mills and three breed-to-wean facilities diagnosed with Porcine deltacoronavirus, or PDCoV, were investigated for possible connections.

SHIC Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg explains, when common feed mills are involved in an outbreak, it presents an opportunity to look at their possible role so researchers looked at what was going on on the farms and at the feed mills supplying those farms.

 

“We should be asking how the feed mills are monitoring for pathogens and whether they are sourcing supplies from regions where a foreign animal disease is present“

 

“Thankfully what was found was that there wasn’t any evidence that the feed mills themselves were directly involved in spreading PDCoV to different farms.

“There wasn’t any evidence through the supply chain indicating that feed or feed delivery was associated with those outbreaks and that’s a good thing.

“Sometimes you want to find a result and you work to do that but sometimes you find negative results.
In this instance what we found was negative results.

“The feed supply chain was not implicated in these farms.

“There may have been other things that go on on these farms that cause them to break at the same time but we wanted to make sure that feed was or was not implicated and was or was not ruled out as a source for PDCoV on these farms.”

Dr. Sundberg advises producers to ask questions. He says we know foreign animal disease can be transmitted by feed and suggests asking about how the feed mills are monitoring for pathogens and whether they are sourcing supplies from regions where a foreign animal disease is present and, if so, if they can source those supplies from somewhere else.

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