The virus has been confirmed in about 200 hog facilities in 14 other states including Arkansas, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota, according to the American Association of Swine Veterinarians.
Dr. Lisa Becton, director of swine health information and research for the National Pork Board, an industry trade group, said the impact on the availability of pork and meat prices is difficult to estimate.
“At this point, I really don’t have any indications what that potential impact would be. Obviously, we know for individual farms the impact is severe, especially if it’s a sow farm that has baby pigs, because baby pigs do suffer the most from the disease,” she said.
According to the Iowa Pork Industry Center, an industry advocate, the ability to test for the disease is limited. It is believed to be transmitted by infected food or feces, and can be contained by quarantining infected animals and washing down trucks and production facilities.
Becton said the disease can spread quickly and has killed entire populations of pigs under 7 days old.
“As they get older, by the time they’re weaned at around 3 weeks of age, death loss can be around 80 percent or in severe cases upwards of 100 percent. Typically, after weaning mortality declines dramatically,” she said.
via Pig Virus Migrates to U.S..
So who has not been watching the importation of pigs or food for pigs and allowed the virus in. We take better care of oranges than this!
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