Farmscape for September 7, 2017

The Executive Director of Swine Health Information Center says Seneca Valley Virus will be the first pathogen examined as part of a project aimed at exploring the potential of using grain dust to monitor for swine pathogens in feed.
In response to the suspicion that Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea entered the U.S. in imported feed the Swine Health Information Centre is spearheading a project which will investigate the potential for using dust samples to monitor for swine pathogens in U.S. feed mills.
Swine Health Information Centre Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg says researchers are going to start with Seneca Valley Virus or Seneca A and see if it can be used as a model to validate this approach.

Clip-Dr. Paul Sundberg-Swine Health Information Center:
There's interest in the Seneca Valley Virus because of all the things that are happening with testing that has to go on in order to make sure that we don't have Foot and Mouth Disease and this might be an opportunity to shoot two birds with one stone.
One, we'll look at dust samples as a validated way to survey or monitor a feed mill for pathogens and secondly, although we don't know about Seneca Valley and transmission orally, it might give us some more information about that virus and about the availability of that virus to pigs around the countryside.
One thing we know is that Seneca Valley Virus is in the same family as Foot and Mouth Disease.
Certainly we don't have that but, in the case if we would, we'd have a way that we could monitor for Foot and Mouth Disease or other swine pathogens in feed.
Seneca Valley is a good test pathogen because it's endemic in the U.S., we want more information about it, and it's also in the same family of a virus that everyone is concerned about with Food and Mouth Disease.
It  certainly isn't an indication that we would get Foot and Mouth Disease through feed but it's something that we want to investigate.

The first results are expected later this year or early next year.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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