AASV NAPETF Meets at World Pork Expo

August 16, 2006 — Monte McCaw

The AASV's North American PRRS Eradication Task Force (NAPETF) held its inaugural meeting during the 2006 World Pork Expo in Des Moines, IA. During this meeting, the committee its core mission and established an action plan to achieve that mission.

A key theme that emerged during the meeting is that there is a critical need to improve producer confidence in the ability to control and prevent PRRS infections. The committee adopted as its Core Mission the challenge of rebuilding producer confidence in PRRS control measures as a first step to achieving PRRS elimination and ultimate eradication. They identified the following over-arching issues to be addressed in order to achieve this mission:

1. Identify what producers perceive are critical road-blocks to PRRS control / PRRSv eradication.
2. Develop, evaluate, and validate new tools or control methods that address these producer-perceived road-blocks to PRRS control and PRRSv eradication.
3. Establish "minimal" criteria and evaluation mechanisms to judge "trustworthiness" or reliability of new PRRS control tools or methods prior to endorsement by NAPETF.
4. Identify and repeat critical PRRS control messages clearly, simply, and accurately.
5. Consistently and frequently communicate significant, sustainable PRRS control success stories.
6. Make communications between producers, practitioners, and PRRSv research groups more obvious and visible.

The participants went on to identify four objectives and associated action items to direct future committee activities and direction. Those objectives are as follows:

Objective 1: Determine what producer misperceptions, lack of knowledge, or lack of confidence in PRRSv spread and control measures are preventing producers from fully controlling or attempting to eliminate such a costly disease agent from their herds.

Objective 2: Review control, monitoring, and elimination methods used in other disease eradication efforts for strategies potentially applicable to PRRS.

Objective 3: Develop for industry-wide dissemination a distilled list of essential / critical biosecurity measures for each phase of production. Include recommended optimal procedures and employee-level explanations of what each procedure is designed to accomplish, how it works to prevent PRRSv infection or transmission.

Objective 4: Develop guidelines and specifications for pig transport vehicle management and design that minimize the risk for PRRSv infection of pigs in subsequent loads.

Additional information can be found on the committee's webpage.

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Monte McCaw, Chair, AASV PRRS Committee