Research continues to move forward on so many fronts in the pig business as research conducted by the Swine Health Information Center has confirmed the ability of viruses to survive in feed under real-world conditions.
Laboratory research shows viruses can survive in feed ingredients during transport over long distances.
As a next step, in partnership with the SHIC, Pipestone Applied Research conducted a demonstration project this spring where they trucked viruses around the country in feed measuring the half-life, degradation, and survivability under real-life conditions.
SHIC executive director Dr. Paul Sundberg said researchers looked at endemic viruses such as Seneca Valley Virus, PRRS and PED in feed ingredients such as soybean meal, vitamins and amino acids.
What gave them confidence in this area of study the demonstration project mimicked what happened in the laboratory. It confirmed that, even out in the real world, as trucks transport these things around the country that soybean products seem to be protective of the different viruses.
“They were able to survive longer in soybean products than others,” said Dr. Sundberg.
“We don’t know the reason for that yet but hypothesize it has something to do with the protein content. It may also be something to do with the water content that’s within the products.”
He said while not absolute, it certainly mimicked what they saw in the laboratory, and the viruses survived longer in protein products like soybeans. They were limited in their survival in vitamins and amino acid ingredients.
“The good thing, we were able to maybe validate the experimental results in the laboratories by taking it out and looking at in under more realistic conditions.”
Dr. Sundberg said the evidence thus far is the transmission of viruses in feed is possible, and the next step is for the industry to figure out the next step and find a solution.
Still, with feed-related research, the executive director of the SHIC said by sourcing feed ingredients from foreign animal disease-free regions, the risk of importing these infections in feed is minimal.
The research showed under real-world conditions, disease-causing pathogens to survive in the feed.
Dr. Sundberg said they tried to get an idea about those that are endemic within the United States and apply those to the standard feed ingredients.
As mentioned, the researchers used soybean meals, vitamins, amino acid ingredients, those types of things. Researchers used those viruses that are endemic to the U.S. but didn’t use any viruses that were outside of the norm.
“We didn’t use African Swine Fever or those types of things because we couldn’t do that, and we didn’t want to take a chance on doing such a thing,” he said. “But we wanted to understand the survivability of the endemic viruses in these feed ingredients. We used Seneca Valley Virus because it is in the same family as Foot and Mouth Disease, so we think that it gives a pretty good indication of the way that Foot and Mouth Disease Virus would perform under similar conditions.”
Dr. Sundberg encouraged producers to talk to their feed suppliers about their source of feed ingredients and mitigations to avoid contamination. If producers source ingredients from areas free of African Swine Fever, Foot and Mouth Disease or Classical Swine Fever, there’s minimal risk, if any, that they’d import those viruses in the feed. •
— By Harry Siemens