Things aren’t looking very good after some new vaccine tests in Vietnam… Unfortunately, the country has had to temporarily suspend the use of its first home-grown African swine fever (ASF) vaccine after dozens of pigs inoculated with the drug died this month.
- The animals were from several farms in the central province of Phu Yen and had been injected with the NAVET-ASFVAC vaccine developed by Navetco – a company owned by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
- Vietnam announced in...
Nitrogen and ammonia emissions are a constant concern for animal sustainability as we increase the amount of pork produced around the world. However decreasing nitrogen emissions is often done by reducing the amount of crude protein fed, which can decrease performance. In this episode, Dalton Humphrey and I talk about his study providing benzoic acid to growing pigs to see how effective it is at decreasing emissions without hindering average daily gain.
Meet the guest:
Dalton Humphrey is...
Rotavirus, without an effective commercial vaccine solution, continues to be a problem for the swine industry. Numerous methods have been tested to help develop immunity in piglets, one of which involves feeding rotavirus frozen into ice cubes to sows so that they will develop antibodies to the virus and pass those antibodies to her piglets through colostrum. In this episode, I talk with Seth Melson about his survey results evaluating industry standards for making these Rotacubes and his thought...
Pigs will only be able to grow at their max potential if they are in good health, and an important component of having good health is having proper air quality and airflow in your barns. In today’s episode, I talk with Dr. Brett Ramirez about proper airflow, the importance of air quality in new and old barns, and other things to consider when designing a new swine facility.
What you’ll learn:
- First steps when building a swine barn
- Things to look out for in a sow barn
- Putting new te...
Research conducted in Vietnam by the Swine Health Information Center (SHIC) has completed an evaluation of three types of tests for African swine fever (ASF) virus detection: a pen-side PCR test and two lateral flow tests – all of which used whole blood and oral swabs.
- The pen-side PCR test was actually pretty good: it detected ASF in infected pigs within three days after infection and ten days after that. The possibility for false positives and negatives was also analyzed and the results are...
It’s like they say: better safe than sorry. With that in mind, four state pork associations are participating in foreign animal disease (FAD) simulation exercises this year to help local producers and responders prepare for an outbreak, in case one occurs.
- The exercises provide them with hands-on opportunities to find the gaps in their plans, equipment, and supplies.
- Kansas and Montana have completed the exercises, and Nebraska and Tennessee will host exercises in October.
The drills ar...
How easy would it be if we could just simply kill harmful microbes by pointing a light at them? Well, fortunately for us, a new study carried out by researchers at Pennsylvania State University shows that we can, in fact, do precisely that. A light-based food sanitization technique that successfully eliminated multiple harmful pathogens in food has been developed.
- The discovery was that targeted pulses of broad-spectrum light have a germicidal response against a list of pathogens, including E...