July 16, 2007

EU's complacency on porcine disease may imperil world pig health

A research team leading the European Commission-funded research project on porcine circovirus diseases (PCVD) warns that failure to pay immediate attention on PCVD may threaten global pig health.

The team said important diseases may go unnoticed in some herds, because farmers and veterinary surgeons have become too familiar with the ailments associated with porcine circovirus.

The warning follows reports of the deaths of millions of pigs in China from a "mysterious pig disease", the

African swine fever (ASF) spread in Georgia, an outbreak of Classical Swine Fever in Croatia and reports of continuous losses of pigs from PCVDs in the United States and Canada.

The research team, lead by Prof Gordon Allan, says that many countries have reported a drop of diagnostic submissions to laboratories due to unspecified clinical and gross post mortem signs associated with PCVD and the disease's similarities to classical swine fever and African swine fever.

Producers who believe they have PCVD are being urged to submit samples for laboratory diagnosis as soon as possible, and avoid making presumptions of clinical diagnosis of PCVD.

Delays in diagnosis have been blamed for the size and scales of the Classical Swine Fever epidemic in the Netherlands in 1997 and foot-and-mouth-disease crisis in the United Kingdom during 2001. Most recent, in particular to the European Union, was the African swine fever in Georgia which was confirmed in June but thought to have been present since in April.

Until now this ASF was thought to be mainly confined to sub-Saharan Africa but it spread in the EU border threatens countries in the northern Europe.

The PCVD project management team advises pig farms worldwide must be vigilant and should have good laboratory diagnosis to identify epizootics for a fast and effective control.

One of the key elements of the PCVD research project has been to focus on harmonising and distributing reagents and protocols for PCVD diagnoses and research across European Union member countries. This will hopefully ensure continuity in laboratory diagnosis of PCVD and will also help in meaningful direct comparison of research results between laboratories working on PCVD.