There’s a lesson here for all animal health pros. Diseases are easily spread. Consider how many times we forget that one of the more important roles of veterinary medicine and animal husbandry prevention processes is population control.
Congratulations to this multi-disciplined team of researchers whose persistence has identified potential for disease contamination in trucks returning from slaughter locations (abattoirs).
Source: National Hog Farmer, June 2017, page 37.
These findings highlight the potential role of the abattoir as a link in the maintenance and/or spread of endemic pathogens and newly introduced pathogens. These results underline the importance of sanitation in aspects of biosecurity, in this case for trailer sanitation for swine farms.
INSIGHTS: It’s not hard to make an intellectual jump to dog/cat boarding facilities, pet daycare locations, dog parks, airports, as well as backyard farm animals when considering the sanitation challenges of a mobile animal population. Animal health pros must lead our human populations to a increased level of understanding about the environmental needs as we increasingly integrate pets of all species into our living spaces.