The Guelph-based George Morris Centre expects to complete an analysis this fall on behalf of the Canadian Swine Health Board of the potential opportunities for controlling and possibly eradicating Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome within the Canadian swine herd.

Senior research associate Dr Al Mussel told those on hand last week for Canadian Swine Health Forum 2010 the three main approaches to dealing with PRRS to this point have included vaccination to build immunity within the herd, de-population, cleaning and re-population of a facility or simply living with the condition.

Dr Al Mussel-George Morris Centre

What we do know is that this is a very expensive disease.

Some of the work out of the US estimated the annual cost in the U.S. swine industry of about 550 million.

That's based largely on looking at decreases in daily gains, increases in feed conversion, mortalities and so on.

In our work in this project we've attempted to capture the variability in a system.

PRRS, while it increases mortality, is more of a morbidity disease that spreads out growth rates in pigs.

It gives people decreased utilization of facilities, increased number of days on feed to get to a particular target weight and therefor increased feed costs and it's not uniform, it's somewhat spread out.

When we go through and estimate the cost associated with it we think conservatively about a cost to the Canadian swine industry of 130 million dollars a year so it's a very expensive disease.

Dr Mussel expects to complete the analysis this fall.

He notes efforts aimed at eliminating PRRS have shown success including initiatives in Minnesota, in several Canadian provinces and in France, and the disease has been successfully eradicated in Chile.

Further Reading

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Find out more information on PRRS by clicking here.