ANTHRAX IN PIGS.

  Step up biosecurity on your pig farms.Report any case of sudden deaths and remember do not touch carcass . Disinfect farms and use foot baths.

A VISIT TO THE OKE- ARO PIG FARM.

 The scourge of African swine fever is trailed with emotional torture and financial losses. The effect of the  virus was more profound with the Covid-19 impact on the economy. The losses recorded on the farm is so high that most of the pens are empty and some farmers have diversified, looking into other agricultural ventures.

   The farm has been decontaminated severally in preparation for restocking of the pens. The biosecurity protocols have also been improved to ensure safety of the animals and the farmers. Training's  demonstrations for the farmers on biosecurity and animal health issues were conducted to keep farmers abreast of new standards in the industry.

   Farmers are encouraged to adopt stringent biosecurity protocols to ensure sustainability and profitability of the venture .

 How to make money from pig farm.

   

Covid-19 and African swine fever(ASF)..

There are some striking similarities between the Covid-19 outbreak and African Swine Fever.

 A different virus has taken over the headlines now ,sharing the spotlight with African Swine Fever dominating the columns online and in the paper, the Corona virus disease 2019 (Covid-19).

 The Corona virus does not affect swine but indirectly affects the swine business. There is one major difference between ASF and Covid-19, this is the fact that ASF leads to the death of virtually all pigs whereas Covid-19 would in most cases not be lethal, meaning that proper health care can play a role as well.

   Learn all you need to  know about ASF from  experts. Join us.

                                     

Lessons learnt with regard to Covid-19 and ASF, lessons learnt are threefold.

First, it’s never too early to start thinking about a virus at the other side of the planet (look at this Danish example).

Secondly, let’s hope the millions pumped into the vaccine business to find a good Covid-19 vaccine somehow lead to a positive spin-off for pig vaccine development too.

 Thirdly, countries reporting many outbreaks are not the ones having the largest problem – they in fact are the ones sharing the most information.

 The striking similarities between Covid-19 and ASF. 1) The sudden panic . 2) The absence of a vaccine now. 3) Reporting of outbreaks.


  Reporting the outbreaks is very important as there is a link between countries reporting and number of cases in such  countries.

There are many websites around the world keeping us posted about the progress of the Covid-19 virus, about the number of people infected, the number of people that died of the virus and mortality percentages, showing interesting maps.

Interestingly, however concrete those numbers appear to be, it’s good to ask questions about the ‘why’ and ‘how’ behind those figures and that there is a parallel with African Swine Fever outbreaks which Pig Progress has been following intensively.


 For example – can people be infected with Covid-19 yet barely notice it? If so, that would mean that the virus could be much more widespread than is actually reported, meaning that the real mortality figure is much lower.

 Extremely interesting in this context I find is the way in which authorities have behaved in recent years with the reporting of ASF outbreaks.

 It is important to understand that accurately reporting ASF outbreaks depends on a gigantic mix of components, just to name a few: 1)Availability of test kits.

 2)Presence of necessary diagnostics infrastructure, including labs.

3)Availability of funding for affected farmers.

 4)Availability of educated manpower to process all information.

 5)Knowledge about the virus.

 6)Sense of responsibility for others.

 7)Cultural attitudes with regard to transparency in case of large problems.

 8)Corruption.

 9)Protection of export interests.

 As regard to ASF, some countries have reported more outbreaks than others, in different frequencies, in different intensity, on different levels as well. Some did not report anything at all – or only occasional outbreaks.

Using the history of reporting , to have a reliable idea as to what numbers might be credible beyond doubt with regard to reporting corona virus, I’d first look at the countries that have been reporting ASF frequently, swiftly and without hesitation.
     Adopted from pig progress.

Mitigating viruses in pig feed ingredients.

Mitigating viruses in pig feed ingredients. Veterinary researchers in the US and Canada have become particularly interested in the role feed has to play in transmission of viruses.

 A team of leading experts dived into the question of how viruses might be shipped around the planet. It was in 2014 that the North American veterinary community – as well as the worldwide feed and pork industries – started to realise that viruses were being transmitted in feed. Porcine Epidemic Diarrhoea (PED) broke out in the United States in 2013 and, by January 2014, the disease had arrived in Canada.


 “We figured out quite quickly at that point that the outbreak here in Canada was linked to a certain feed ingredient, from the same feed mill, and soon thereafter a research paper was published by scientists at the National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease in Winnipeg Manitoba that showed the link was possible”, explains Dr Egan Brockhoff, veterinarian at Prairie Swine Health Services in Red Deer, AB, Canada and veterinary counsellor for the Canadian Pork Council. “

 African Swine Fever (ASF) came along and since then in the US, Dr Scott Dee, Dr Megan Niederwerder and Dr Cassandra Jones and others have done a lot of work to look into how viruses can tag along in feed ingredients being shipped all over the world.”

 Among the many other studies, Dr Dee (of Pipestone Applied Research at Pipestone Veterinary Services, MN, United States) and colleagues had published an evaluation in 2018 of the survival of livestock viruses in animal feed ingredients that were, and still are, imported daily into the US.

 The study involved simulated transboundary shipping conditions and 11 diseases of global significance: Foot-and-Mouth Disease, Classical Swine Fever, ASF, influenza A, pseudorabies (Aujeszky’s Disease), Nipah disease, Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS), Swine Vesicular Disease, Vesicular Stomatitis, Porcine Circovirus 2 and Vesicular Exanthema of Swine.


 For six viruses, it was possible to use surrogates with similar genetic and physical properties, but for the others actual viruses had to be used “We found that more viruses survived in conventional soybean meal, lysine hydrochloride, choline chloride, vitamin D and pork sausage casings,” says Dr Dee. “These results also supported data already published on the risk of transporting PEDv in feed.”

Read research here.

Pig producers considers stopping castration.

 Pig producers considers  stopping  castration.

10 pig producers’ organisations in Western France are considering to stop castrating piglets as from December 31, 2021.

 The organisations represent a respectable part of the country’s producers. The proposal of the 10 organisations is a reaction to a decision by Didier Guillaume, France’s minister for agriculture and food.His aim is to improve animal welfare in France’s pig industry and one of his measures is that, after 2021, castration will only be allowed when anesthetics are applied.


 The intention is that the basis price for pigs will be adjusted. The collectives feel that gilts as well as entire boars will form the reference for pig prices as from 2021.

 The slaughterhouses will become the place for checks whether or not carcasses will have boar taint, these could be detected by sniffing at the slaughter line by humans. Additional costs of these checks will be carried jointly by the pig farms that stopped castrating.

Medium-chain fatty acids: Protecting pigs from pathogens.

Global movement of feed ingredients calls for an in-feed disease mitigation strategy.

Feed and feed ingredients have the potential to harbor devastating bacteria and viruses like porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) virus, porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) and African swine fever (ASF).


The bacteria and viruses can be transmitted in feed – eventually making their way through the pig’s digestive system and replicating, causing infection.

 The global movement of feed ingredients and commodities increases the risk of introducing disease through ingredients when sourced from areas of active disease pressures.


The risk of global disease transmission reinforces the need for an in-feed mitigation strategy to help guard against disease threats.

 Medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs)  have proven to be a useful biosecurity tool, essentially acting as security guards to protect pigs from bacteria and viruses.

The coconut oil  contains a (medium chain fatty acid}begin working in feed, before pigs consume it, to reduce the feed’s pathogen load. After feed consumption, it continues to work inside the animal to weaken pathogens in the digestive tract. Learn how coconut oil in your pig diet can act as a biosecurity tool .

The coconut oil kills bacteria in feed before the pig consumes it and also prevents the replication of bacteria inside the pig.

This is how it kills bacteria:1)Degrade the bacterial cell membrane.

 2)Dissociate into the bacterial cell, causing the pH inside the cell to drop.

 3)Block DNA replication of bacterial cells. In case of viruses with envelopes this is how coconut oil protects the pigs.

"African Swine Fever is a man-made disease".

"African Swine Fever is a man-made disease".If there is one take-home message to report after having spoken to two of the leading scientists on African Swine Fever, it should be that the major threat with regard to the virus is not the virus itself, but how humans deal with it.

 Dr Klaus Depner, head of the International Animal Health Team at the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut (FLI) on the island Riems in northern Germany, has to admit that even he as expert needed some time to understand the disease. How does the virus spread?Wild boars shed the virus mainly when they are very sick and in the final stage of the disease.

When the animals have high fever it’s in their character to stay where they are, and they are certainly not going to walk very far when they feel bad. So what we have here is a virus that is very stable in its environment without fast movement. It neither dies out, nor moves. Undisposed carcasses of infected wild boars remain infectious for a long time in the environment and become a source of infection for healthy animals.


 The human role Still, ASF did spread from the Caucasus until the Baltics and Poland. The question now is how. Soft ticks and insects are unlikely to have transmitted the virus, the scientists say. In fact, they have little doubt identifying about the real reason behind most of the ASF outbreaks: negligence.
Participating in recent ASF monitoring missions in Eastern Europe, Depner has a good idea of what has likely occurred. He says, “Often it was a matter of human misbehaviour. What happened is that infected meat made it to the market.


When many pigs started to die, they were sent to slaughter. Pig prices dropped, cheap meat entered the market and the meat made its way into homes – and into suitcases. This is how the virus dispersed. The virus spread along the main roads, the transport routes. This spread bears a 100% human mark.” more.

AFRICAN SWINE FEVER..

 How to protect your farm from African Swine Fever. How to protect a pig farm from African Swine Fever.(ASF). ASF is all about contact ASF is spread by contact. Far less by the pig breathing the virus in as in Classical Swine Fever, so it should be easier to prevent and control.

Think ‘contact’ in everything you plan to do and subsequently carry out on the premises. The contact is not just pig to pig, but what we humans do by allowing the ASF virus in through contact on the clothing equipment, vehicles, food deliveries, breeding stock and every other visit by an ‘outsider’ to or into your vulnerable farm premises.

 1) Keep everybody off your farm You will need discipline and tact to do this effectively. Quite brutally, you do not know where they have been! So do not risk it.

COVID-19 AND MEAT PACKAGING PLANT.

COVID-19 AND MEAT PACKAGING PLANT. Although the identity of COVID-19's patient zero is still unknown, the virus is widely suspected to have originated in a Wuhan wet market. And one thing is crystal clear: These informal slaughterhouses, along with their more formal counterparts in the factory farming industry, are the perfect place to spread disease. Crowding animals into confined, unsanitary conditions to be slaughtered—mixing blood, guts and feces—creates a petri dish for pathogens. These informal and formal "flu factories" can quickly spread a bat- or bird-borne disease among intermediary animals that humans consume. Slaughterhouses and meat-packing plants are also among the worst COVID-19 hot spots for humans. Some of the largest outbreaks in North America occurred in meatpacking plants.

How to protect a pig farm from African Swine Fever.(ASF).

 How to protect a pig farm from African Swine Fever.(ASF).


ASF is all about contact ASF is spread by contact. Far less by the pig breathing the virus in as in Classical Swine Fever, so it should be easier to prevent and control.

 Think ‘contact’ in everything you plan to do and subsequently carry out on the premises. The contact is not just pig to pig, but what we humans do by allowing the ASF virus in through contact on the clothing equipment, vehicles, food deliveries, breeding stock and every other visit by an ‘outsider’ to or into your vulnerable farm premises.

 1) Keep everybody off your farm You will need discipline and tact to do this effectively. Quite brutally, you do not know where they have been! So do not risk it. The only permissible person as routine is the pig veterinarian and of all people he should take the necessary precautions.

Even so, do not allow his vehicle on to the farm. Have a parking spot outside the perimeter and if necessary, help carry his equipment in for him.

 There will be skilled artisans of course, electricity, roofing, plumbing, etc. who will need access. Keep their vehicles off the farm too and make it clear beforehand (for the sake of good relations) that they will have to use farm overalls and footwear and need their equipment mist-sprayed.

 2)An unbreakable farm perimeter defense. For the delivery of replacement stock (semen is safer than live pigs) and the collection of finished pigs, have designated areas on or just outside the farm perimeter.

On no account allow ‘helpful’ drivers (offering to assist with the loading) on to the premises. The same with bulk or bagged food and supplies.

 As soon as you can, set up food reception bulk bins using your own inlet hoses, not theirs; a covered site for bags and other bulky deliveries. All 3 on the farm boundary, for later inward transmission by your own staff, never theirs.

Agribusiness:How to get small piglets to eat more feed.

Agribusiness:How to get small piglets to eat more feed.What influences feed intake of small piglets? Researchers from the Netherlands looked at the effects on feed intake and feeding behaviour of many aspects of feed in more detail. The scientists, attached to Wageningen University and Research, published about the research in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science. They describe a trial that tested the feeding behaviour of suckling piglets when different diets were supplied to them. The hypothesis of the study was that presentation of the feed in a more diverse form, by varying multiple sensory properties of the feed, stimulates pre-weaning feed intake. Stimulating solid feed intake in suckling piglets is important to facilitate the weaning transition, exemplified by the positive correlation between pre- and post-weaning feed intake. 2 different diets tested by piglets Piglets received ad libitum feed from 2 days of age in 2 feeders per pen (choice feeding set-up).Feed A was an experimental diet from the university’s Animal Nutrition Group. Extruder settings intendedly varied during production, resulting in differences in pellet texture, length and hardness to create diversity within feed A. Feed B is a commercial diet, called Baby Big XL, from Coppens Diervoeding in the Netherlands. Feed B was a 14-mm diameter pellet, with a length of 10-20 mm and a hardness of 6.8 kg.Feeding behaviour was studied by weighing feed remains and by live observations. Observations were also used to discriminate ‘eaters’ from ‘non-eaters’. In addition, eaters were grouped into different eater classes (i.e. good, moderate and bad). Provision of feed A and B increased pre-weaning feed intake by 50% compared to provision of feed A only (with and without additional flavours). Piglets receiving feed A and B had no overall preference in terms of feed intake for either feed A or B, indicating pre-weaning feed intake increased by an enhanced intake of both feeds. These results supported the researchers’ hypothesis that the more diverse the feeds provided in terms of sensory properties (e.g. ingredient composition, texture), the greater the intake will be. The reason for this is expected to be sensory-specific satiety and/or piglets’ intrinsic motivation to explore.

AGRIBUSINESS: Print-Arome for flavor imprinting.

AGRIBUSINESS: Print-Arome for flavour imprinting. Print-Arome is flavor formulated with essential oils.Dosed in the sows and post-weaning diets generate an “imprinting” effect in the piglets. This effect familiarizes the piglets with its scent and facilitates the introduction to solid food. As a result, it increases feed intake, weight gain and reduces health problems associated with early weaning. It improves feed intake by 95% while it reduces stress by 92%. Print-Arome.

Agribusiness: A good start is vital for healthy piglets.

Agribusiness: A good start is vital for healthy piglets.Raising healthy piglets from start through weaning is a challenge not to be underestimated, impacting performance and health at later stages. Sudden change in dietary regimens and management at weaning puts a heavy burden on the animal’s immature digestive system. This leads to a disturbed immune system and microbiota, and increased susceptibility to diseases. Stress already starts at birth, a crucial period filled with risks: piglets must be born strong and healthy and remain that way. Once born, piglets encounter several hurdles: piglets suffer from all kinds of pathogenic challenges with an immature immune system. There is a significant and immediate demand on the gut to digest and absorb nutrients efficiently to maintain a high growth rate. Intestinal epithelial cell integrity is of prime importance considering that this epithelium is responsible for absorption of water, electrolytes, and nutrients. Not to forget the beneficial microbiome that must establish itself as soon as possible to guarantee a fully functioning intestinal tract. Once the piglet could manage these hurdles, another event, considered as a major stressor, takes place: weaning. Although technological improvements in housing, nutrition, and management are available to minimise the stress, piglets are weaned at unphysiologically early ages. The sudden change in dietary regimens at weaning places a heavy burden on the immature digestive system of the piglet. The gastro-intestinal tract is affected by a change in microbiome, mechanical damage, and inflammation as reaction to the stresses (social, nutritional, handling) of weaning. The effects are aggravated by the immature immune system which has not developed a full response to cope with pathogens, resulting in disease . It is clear impairment of the normal gut and immune function, leading to diarrhoea and even death, which needs to be avoided.

AGRIBUSINESS: 4 piglet parameters for lifetime performance.

             AGRIBUSINESS: 4 piglet parameters for lifetime performance.

 Genetic selection is leading to larger litters of piglets born with lowered levels of physiological maturity. As this trend amplifies an evolutionary strategy in swine favouring survival of the fittest, it presents negative performance and animal welfare implications.

 Sow Peripartal Syndrome is a complex web of interactions affecting sows and piglets during the peripartal period. At least four parameters are present at birth that can ultimately determine piglets’ lifetime performance.

The following is an update on research underway to managing the syndrome. Alive at birth While genetic selection has increased the total number of pigs per litter, the number of pigs born alive has not increased at the same pace.

AGRIBUSINESS: Heat stress in pigs and its effect on the gut.

AGRIBUSINESS:    Heat stress in pigs and its effect on the gut. 


 Heat Stress is a physiological response to high environmental temperatures, where the animal is out of its thermo-neutral zone and can no longer effectively regulate its body temperature. Consequently, animal health, well-being and performance are negatively affected.

 

GENE EDITING AND PIG CASTRATION.

GENE EDITING AND PIG CASTRATION. Male piglets used for pork production are routinely castrated to improve the quality of meat for consumers.

Castration gets rid of boar taint, an unpleasant odor and unsavory taste in the meat. For decades, castration has been done surgically. But new breeding technology can produce male piglets that never reach puberty.

 Tad Sonstegard is the chief scientific officer of Acceligen, a company that focuses on genetic improvement in food animals. He says these piglets will come from the company DNA Genetics. "Those males will have had to have been rescued from being infertile, and then they would just breed sows that also had been rescued and the offspring between the breeding of those two rescued genetic lines would result in sterile males and females, we believe," he says.

"Those are what would be sold from the multiplier sites out to the swine producers." The technology will make a piglet’s life a little easier – and the producer’s as well. GENE EDITING AND PIG CASTRATION.

Cows and pigs are great livestock, but they can also make you really sick

Cows and pigs are great livestock, but they can also make you really sick.Sometimes in this world, it’s the little things that can cause the most problems. Really, really little things. This is especially true for anyone working around or with livestock in Maine, according to Dr. Anne Lichtenwalner, director of the University of Maine Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and associate professor of animal and veterinary science. Some farm animals can actually “share” parasites with their human companions. “There are actually just a handful of parasites that I worry about,” Lichtenwalner said. “These are critters that are parasites that can live inside you and tend not to be fatal, but that can cause some ugly surprises.” The two most common zoonotic parasites — those that can transfer from animals to humans — in Maine are Ascaris suum and Cryptosporidium. “You are protected by your innate and acquired immune system,”

New coronavirus emerges from bats in China, devastates young swine.

New coronavirus emerges from bats in China, devastates young swine. A newly identified coronavirus that killed nearly 25,000 piglets in 2016-17 in China emerged from horseshoe bats near the origin of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), which emerged in 2002 in the same bat species. The new virus, called swine acute diarrhea syndrome coronavirus (SADS-CoV), doesn't appear to infect people, unlike SARS-CoV which infected more than 8,000 people and killed 774. No SARS-CoV cases have been identified since 2004. The study investigators identified SADS-CoV on four pig farms in China's Guangdong Province.

What PED taught us about handling future disease outbreaks.

What PED taught us about handling future disease outbreaks. The porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) outbreak that devastated many US hog farms over the past 4 years served as a wake-up call for the pork industry to be more vigilant against foreign animal diseases.

 “We know what to do in the case of foreign animal diseases, like foot-and-mouth disease, classical swine fever and African swine fever,” Dustin Oedekoven, DVM, South Dakota state veterinarian, said. He thinks the industry also has a “fairly clear direction” about how to handle future investigations and where to submit diagnostic samples.

 A gap that became evident with the PEDV outbreak is we weren’t working in a coordinated manner to control the spread of the disease. As a result, it spread very rapidly because the swine industry was very naïve to the virus.

 Veterinarians worked with producers to identify the critical problems. Samples were submitted to diagnostic labs for routine workup.  When the expected diseases weren’t found, the labs initiated additional diagnostic tests and were able to identify PEDV.

 Other diagnostic labs worked collaboratively to develop a rapid test to identify the virus. However, a break in communications caused a gap in timely response to the disease.

PEDV and other pathogens survive in feed for weeks.

PEDV and other pathogens survive in feed for weeks.In 2013-2014, infection of pig farms with porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) was a frequent event, even on farms using the highest level of biosecurity. Investigations into the occurrence showed one common denominator across many of these farms which was feed outage in a specific subpopulation of animals, requiring an emergency feed delivery to a specific bin onsite. The pigs consuming the feed from the emergency delivery were the first to become infected. Samples from inside the suspect feed bins were collected and sent to a diagnostic lab for testing. The results showed the feed did contain live PEDV, an outcome that had not been confirmed before.