PCVAD Committee Meets during Annual Meeting

March 28, 2007 — 

The AASV Porcine Circovirus Associated Disease (PCVAD) Committee met on March 2nd prior to the association's annual meeting. The Committee, chaired by Dr. Tom Gillespie, met to discuss updates on the prevalence and severity of the disease internationally and recent vaccine issues in North America.

Dr. Pam Zaabel updated members on National Pork Board's activities. The NPB recently funded approximately $500,000 worth of research projects targeting transmission, co-factor issues and biosecurity. The PCVAD brochure produced by NPB and AASV has received great response. Dr. Zaabel went on to say that nearly $400,000 of funding for 2007 research has been pledged with the call for proposals to occur in April. The research projects are following the strategy priorities outlined in August, 2006 after the George Young Conference and published in a recent issue of JSHAP.

Numerous topics were discussed including: strain variance, utilizing 2A and 2B identification instead of RFLP numbers, PCV2 is more prevalent in flows that exhibit PCVAD then in flows that do not exhibit clinical signs, maternal antibody does not seem to be a major deterrent to timing of vaccination of offspring and concern that vaccination of sows could contribute to delaying the clinical signs to an older age.

The group also discussed the interest and need for state level groups, i.e. the "old" swine advisory committees, to reconvene into producer and veterinarian groups discussing emerging and re-emerging disease issues. This could be a timely and informative method of developing a communication network that would capture issues at a very early time.

The issue of the use of tissue homogenate was also discussed. The main point by those in attendance was for AASV to continue to take the "high road" with this issue. It was felt that once a plentiful supply of commercial vaccine is available, then there may need to be additional activities by AASV leadership if the tissue homogenate use continues.

A complete summary of the meeting is available on the PCVAD committee web page.