Source: Rita Jane Gabbett, MEATINGPLACE, 2/20/14

The Humane Society of the United States plans to announce Thursday morning the findings from an undercover investigation into an agribusiness producer in Kentucky.  

The video will in part be related to efforts to stem the spread of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus (PEDV), which is deadly to baby pigs but does not affect humans and does not affect the quality or safety of pork.

HSUS showed the video ahead of time to New York Times Op-Ed columnist Nicholas Kristof, who wrote about it in this morning’s edition. Meatingplace has not viewed the video.  

According to Kristof, the video shows workers gutting dead piglets and turning their intestines into a puree to be fed to sows.

There are no effective vaccines approved or available to combat PEDV, a virus that kills 100 percent of pigs younger than four weeks of age when a herd is infected. The virus, first reported in the United States in April 2013, has since spread to at least 25 states, with two more likely to report outbreaks this week.

Meatingplace interviewed veterinary experts on what hog farmers are doing —and have done for decades — to immunize sows through “controlled exposure” to a virus so they can transfer antibodies against that virus to their babies through lactation. Farmers use either the intestines or the scour (diarrhea) of dead infected piglets to infect sows. Intestines are mashed into slurry and mixed into feed or a diluted solution of scour can be sprayed on the sow’s snout.      

“This is a dire situation,” said veterinarian Paul Sundberg, vice president science and technology for the National Pork Board. “We are using the only tool we have to stimulate the immunity of the sow.”
“It isn’t anything anyone wants to do,” said veterinarian Rodney (Butch) Baker, director of the Iowa Pork Industry Center and senior clinician at Iowa State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “But in these situations, it is the only way we know of saving a lot of pigs. From that perspective, it is the humane thing to do to reduce mortality.”

This procedure, sometimes called “feedback” is the only way to achieve controlled exposure, said veterinarian Tom Burkgren, executive director of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians. “There is absolutely no other way to stimulate that immunity. We are speeding up the exposure that would occur naturally over time. It gives us a much better chance of protecting baby pigs.”

Baker said controlled exposure in an infected sow herd has successfully decreased the number of weeks of baby pig death losses. The procedure has been successfully used against other swine viruses since the mid-1900s, according to Sundberg. He noted that in a natural environment both wild hog sows and those raised outdoors will eat dead baby pigs on their own as a natural protection against virus.  

There are at least two companies working on PEDV vaccines, but research takes time and any vaccine would also have to be approved by the USDA.

Piglets infected with the virus will die. “Blunt force trauma is one thing we use to put these (dying) pigs out of their misery,” explained Baker. If executed properly, blunt force trauma is an industry accepted form of euthanasia.

Sundberg noted that data collected since PEDV was first reported in the United States in April reflects that its spread has been equal among large and small hog operations.

“We know through the outbreak and the data we have collected that the type of production system is not going to protect a herd,” said Sundberg, noting that highly biosecure, very clean large facilities have been infected as well as tiny farms. “This virus loves to attach to the intestines of pigs and whether there are five or 5,000, it will find the intestines and replicate.”

The industry has spent over $1 million over the past nine months in research looking for ways to better battle this disease.

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