Heavy swine disease pressure outside the U.S. is real. African swine fever, classic swine flu and foot and mouth disease are all being reported. Swine and cattle are implicated.
All of these threats underline the need for U.S. producers and feed suppliers to review and increase biosecurity protocols to keep disease threats from affecting U.S. herds.
The scale of dealing with FMD is mind boggling. National Pork Producers Council anticipates the U.S. will need an inventory of 10 million doses of FMD vaccine, the estimated need for the first two weeks of a potential outbreak. The proposed vaccine bank would also need to store FMD antigen against all 23 of the most common types of the disease.
Source: PORK, September 26, 2018. Link. Producers hope a FAD vaccine bank, included the current draft of the next farm bill, will help provide additional resources. Funding of the vaccine bank, however is unclear.
Keeping trade-limiting foreign animal diseases, such as ASF, out of the U.S. is critical to pork producers,” said Steve Rommereim. . . “We all need to improve the overall level of FAD preparedness. We hope for the best, but we must prepare for the worst.”