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1. REMINDER: APHIS Reimbursement Deadline for SECD Diagnostic Submissions
USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Bulletin
April 25, 2016
In June 2014, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant and Health Inspection Service (APHIS) issued a Federal Order for monitoring and managing novel swine enteric coronavirus diseases (SECD) and provided $26.2 million in emergency funding to support these efforts. This emergency funding will be exhausted by the end of April 2016.
In anticipation of depleting these funds, APHIS will pay for testing of SECD diagnostic samples received on or before April 30, 2016 and billed to APHIS' Veterinary Services (VS) program prior to June 30, 2016. Swine operations may continue to conduct diagnostic sampling after this date, but we will not provide reimbursement for the testing after April 30, 2016.
VS will be engaging in discussions with stakeholders to determine the future of the SECD program. These discussions will include how SECD fits into the future of comprehensive and integrated swine surveillance and other swine health activities.
Instructions to National Animal Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN) laboratories have been provided separately by the NAHLN Office. The revised federal order remains in effect, and reporting of positive cases by NAHLN laboratories will remain mandatory.
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2. PRRS-resistant gene editing shows promise to industry
By Randall S. Prather, University of Missouri, Division of Animal Sciences
National Hog Farmer
April 25, 2016
Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome was first reported in North America in 1987 and was called the "mystery pig disease." The virus causing this disease was identified in Europe in 1990 and named porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus.
The virus replicates in alveolar macrophages (immune cells in the lungs), and animals become persistently infected. In addition, infection by PRRSV predisposes animals to other bacterial and viral pathogens. Young and growing pigs exhibit pneumonia, diarrhea and mortality of 12% to 15%. Sows and gilts have reproductive failure, late abortion, early farrowing, increased mummification of fetuses and decreased litter size. Boars have low libido, fever and low sperm counts. Vaccines have not effectively controlled the virus.
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3. Most poultry sites released from quarantine [IN]
Ashley Langreck, Field Editor
AgriNews.com
April 25, 2016
INDIANAPOLIS - The month of January was a hard one for the poultry industry in Indiana, when highly pathogenic avian influenza struck in Dubois County.
Denise Derrer, public information director for the Indiana Board of Animal Health, said that on Jan. 15 a commercial turkey operation was confirmed positive for having the disease. Testing within the control area found nine other commercial sites tested positive for the virus.
"That meant the quarantine of 10 infected sites, along with two non-infected farms that were dangerous contacts and at high risk of contracting the disease," she said.
As a result, all the birds on the quarantined sites had to be depopulated and removed. Producers from the 12 farms lost more than 414,000 birds and were under quarantine for several weeks.
Derrer said biosecurity is the biggest factor in disease prevention for any type of livestock or poultry operation.
"This means eliminating or reducing opportunity for diseases to enter an operation, which means changing shoes and clothing when entering the barns, controlling traffic in and out of operations, not sharing equipment with other farms and cleaning and disinfecting vehicles and equipment," she said.
As of last week, 11 of the 12 sites have been released from the quarantine, Derrer said. Those operations have been told they can repopulate.
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4. Scott Walker opens door to stepped up CWD strategies [WI]
By Paul A. Smith
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
April 25, 2016
Madison - Gov. Scott Walker said Monday Wisconsin needs to do more to combat chronic wasting disease and state officials will likely release new proposals on the fatal deer condition within a month.
Walker made the comments to reporters at the state Capitol after signing a bill making all fourth drunken driving offenses felonies.
They were the first statements directly from the governor regarding CWD since two Democratic legislators met last week with Walker's chief of staff.
State Reps. Chris Danou (D-Trempeleau) and Nick Milroy (D-South Range) presented six CWD management recommendations to the governor's staff, including intensive culls at new infection sites and requiring double fencing at captive deer facilities.
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5. Across N.C.: Pigs Gone Wild
By Catherine Clabby
[Reprinted from N.C. Health News]
CoastalReview.org
April 25, 2016
RALEIGH - In a hushed conference room in the heart of Research Triangle Park, a veterinary scientist urged college students to picture what might go wrong when the wild and the tame collide.
To focus their thinking, Suzanne Kennedy-Stoskopf , a N.C. State University professor, shared a sobering scenario that could occur in North Carolina. It went like this:
Hungry wild pigs burst through a fence confining livestock on a small farm, as they do frequently on the coast, in the mountains and in between. Once through, the intruders push domestic pigs aside to gorge on pasture grass or feed - anything edible they find, including young animals.
Seeing the damage the next day, a farmer recognizes that feral swine breached his land. That isn't a giant surprise because populations of the animals have exploded in the Southeast.
But he never considers what the intruders might have carried in.
That remains true weeks later when a sow on his farm delivers a litter of stillbirth piglets, disappointing a 10-year-old boy assisting his uncle during a Thanksgiving visit. The farmer assumes bad luck was in play.
As Christmas approaches, the nephew gets sick at his home on the outskirts of a city. At first, his family suspects flu. But after a punishing headache and pain in his neck flare, doctors fear lethal meningitis is in play and scramble to find a cause.
No one, at least not right away, suspects the bacteria Brucella suis, which jumps from wild pigs and can kill piglets and cause a potentially serious illness called brucellosis in people.
"Nobody is thinking about that, so it takes a long time for the people involved to recognize what the problem was," Kennedy-Stoskopf said.
To try to shift such thinking, the College of Veterinary Medicine professor collaborates with others in her field, along with physicians, veterinarians and researchers specialized in environmental, plant and wildlife topics. Members of the N.C. One Health Collaborative, they work to increase awareness of ways that the health of people, animals and the environment overlap.
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6. Impacts of Oil and Gas Fracking on Animal Health? Horses Born without the Ability to Swallow
By Lorraine Berry, Global Research
Center for Research on Globalization
April 25, 2016
In New York's Southern Tier, local newspapers are investigating the connection between a local racetrack owner's sick foals and the fracking fluids present on his farmland. The Ithaca Journal featured a report by Tom Wilber in which he investigated the ongoing issue with foals being born without the ability to swallow - seventeen of them so far - on the breeding farm of Jeff Gural, owner of the Tioga Downs, Meadowlands Racetrack, and Vernon Downs.
The foals have survived, although all of them have had to be transported to Cornell's School of Veterinary Medicine, located fifty miles north in Ithaca, New York. An earlier study by Cornell professor Robert Oswald and Cornell veterinarian Michelle Bamberger linked the presence of the byproducts of hydraulic fracturing to numerous animal deaths and stillbirths. Their research included twenty-four case studies of multiple farm animals who had either been killed outright by the cocktail of chemicals or later proved unable to successfully reproduce after exposure.
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7. Texas Tech Moving Forward with Veterinary School Plans, Aiming to Open in 2019
By Alyssa Goard
MyHighPlains.com
April 25, 2016
Last year, Texas Tech announced plans for a veterinary school to be housed at the TTUHSC campus in Amarillo. Despite doubts from the Texas A&M System which is home to the only veterinary school currently operating in Texas, the Texas Tech System is continuing their efforts to make this school a reality. One faculty member involved with the planning told EverythingLubbock.com that the goal is for the first group of students to begin taking classes in 2019 at the Texas Tech veterinary school.
Guy Loneragan, Professor of Food Safety and Public Health as well as Interim Vice President for Research at Texas Tech, said that he is one of many people on the team crafting TTU's veterinary school plans. Loneragan adds expertise to the team because he is also a veterinarian, and many of his students in Animal Sciences say they wish they'd had the chance to attend Texas Tech for veterinary school as well.
"We hear that from students today and we hear that from former students," Loneragan said. "In fact we were in a meeting with some veterinarians just last month, and we heard from a student who came to Texas Tech in 1967 because he heard there was going to be a vet school. He since became a veterinarian through Texas A&M and he is thrilled that Texas Tech will finally be moving forward."
Loneragan explained that Texas Tech has continued with their goal of building a veterinary school to train rural veterinarians who could provide assistance to the less populated and more agriculturally-based communities in Texas.
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