New Vaccines Accelerate Reduction of Porcine Circo Virus Associated Disease Related Mortality

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Farm-Scape, Episode 2256

A Drummondville swine veterinarian reports two new vaccines have accelerated the decline in mortality among Quebec farms affected by Porcine Circo Virus Associated Disease.

Although Porcine Circo Virus Associated Disease affects weanling pigs, symptoms are typically exhibited in the grower phase with often fatal consequences.

Based on the diagnosis of practicing veterinarians it's estimated that, during the first five months of 2005, between 55 and 60 percent of the finishing sites in Quebec were affected to some degree by this disease.

Dr. Francois Cardinal, with Les Consultants Avi-Porc estimates, at its peak, more than 80 percent of farms were affected with some farms reporting mortality as high as 40 percent.

"It began to be a problem about October of 2004. It increased until summer 2005 but since winter of 2005 things are improving actually without vaccination.

We saw mortality decreasing and the amount of affected farms were decreasing since spring 2006 we can say. Now we begin to see the results of the piglet and sow vaccination and this improvement is even better.

We think that the mortality we had in average for the affected farms in Quebec were about 10 percent and, without vaccination, mortality were decreased to about 8 percent but now with the vaccine we see a 2 or 2.5 percent mortality in finishers so a large improvement with vaccination."

Dr. Cardinal indicates no one had expected the vaccines to be so effective so there's good reason for optimism. He notes the biggest concern at this point is availability of vaccine.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.