The role transportation of gilts can play in the spread
of Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome
(PRRS) is just one of the findings beginning to emerge from
an ambitious project that is looking at the spread of the
disease in Ontario. Launched in 2005 by University of Guelph
researchers Dr. Cate Dewey, chair of the Ontario Veterinary College’s department of population medicine, and Dr.
Zvonimir Poljak, an assistant professor with the department,
the project has mapped clinical problems linked with PRRS
in Ontario herds from September 2004 to August 2007. One of these is the recognition that if a truck carrying
gilts visited other farms before visiting your farm and
if it wasn’t always washed, disinfected and dried before it
arrived, “you were put at an increased risk of getting PRRS,”
says Dewey.
The problem is Ontario-specific, she adds, pointing out
that in some North American jurisdictions, “they wouldn’t
dream of putting gilts on a truck which hadn’t been cleaned.”