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Introduction
Asia has been playing an important role as pork export or/and import countries for the swine producing countries in North America, South America and EU. However, detail insights of Asian swine industry, especially regarding a recent update on swine health, are not well documented to date. Recently, the 4th congress of Asian Pig Veterinary Society (APVS) was held in Tsukuba, Japan on October 2009, and I had an opportunity to serve as a member of the congress organizing committee. In this article, I would like to report some highlights of the congress and provide you with recent update on swine health in Asian swine industries.
History of Asian Pig Veterinary Society (APVS)
Asian Pig Veterinary Society (APVS) was established in 2002 through the effort of two swine veterinarians, Dr. Jeong Hyun-kyo from South Korea and Dr. Masatsugu Toyoura from Japan, with the objective of continuous development of pig production in Asia. Since then, APVS has been developed as a unique academic society that organizes a congress from viewpoints of swine veterinarians, researchers and producers for the purpose of creating an environment in which highly productive pig production can be accomplished by solving problems on swine health and production management in the Asian regions. To date, APVS has become the most well-recognized society of swine veterinary medicine in Asia.
The 4th congress of APVS was just held in Tsukuba, Japan on October 2009. There were more than 200 abstracts presented. There were approximately 1,200 attendees, it is important to note that there was a significant number of producers who attended this meeting (approximately 200), although this congress was to focus on swine veterinary medicine and still majority of the attendees were veterinarians and researchers. This reflected to the agenda of the organizing committee of this congress; “To provide academic research information and advanced veterinary knowledge/technology that can be applied to the field”.
Various topics on keynotes and research workshops
The congress had various topics on the keynote speeches as well as the research workshops. If you look at even only those topics, it would give you a brief idea about what is significant on swine health in Asia to date:
· Current status of pig production and disease problem in Asian countries.
· Trans-boundary action to control FMD and CSF in Asian region.
· PRRS & PCVAD: Epidemiology, diagnosis and intervention strategies.
· Production system and biosecurity.
· Viral pneumonia.
· Bacterial pneumonia.
· Viral and bacterial diarrhea.
· Strategies for successful pig production business.
· Food safety.
· Advanced techniques on swine reproduction.
FMD and CSF in Asia
Although most of the countries in North America and EU have already eradicated FMD (foot and mouth disease) and CSF (classical swine fever), there are still some countries in Asia that struggle of being free of those two diseases. It is still well-remembered that FMD destroyed the entire swine business in Taiwan when they had an outbreak in 1999 (before that outbreak, Taiwan used to be one of the largest pork exporting countries in Asia).
To date, FMD and CSF are considered to be important in means of pork export-import business between Asian countries. Some might say that those two diseases can often be used as “political tools”. Japan has been already free of both FMD and CSF. South Korea has also eradicated FMD and CSF once; however, they have recently experienced a sporadic outbreak of CSF. There are some countries in Asia including China, Vietnam and Thailand who are still experiencing economically significant outbreaks of both/either of these two diseases in certain regions.
PRRS in Asia
Like most of pig producing countries in North America, South America and EU, PRRS continues to be a most economically significant disease in swine industries in Asia to date. Dr. Yamane reported a total estimated loss due to PRRS in Japan to be $288 million. The attempts have been made to control/eradicate PRRS virus from a large system (>9,000 sows a total) in Japan by implementing sow immune management, gilt acclimatization, unidirectional AI/AO pig flow and strict biosecurity protocol for both internally and externally. Although some advanced swine veterinarians and producers in Asia focus on obtaining and utilizing the cutting-edge information regarding PRRSV control/eradication in order to solve the problems, there is still huge variety seen among and between the Asian countries, in terms of the degree of scientific knowledge on PRRS control/eradication. Dr. Dee made a keynote speech and provided a model of global collaboration on PRRS eradication in order to emphasize the importance of the field-applied research as well as the extension function of the academic institute such as university. It is hoped that his presentation could stimulate and encourage the Asian swine industry for that aspect.
Additionally, Dr. Yan reported scientific detailed information regarding “high virulent PRRS in China”. He clearly concluded that the causative agent of the current high mortality syndrome in Chinese swine industry was a strain of PRRS virus with 30-amino acid deletion in it’s Nsp2-coding region, and it seemed that the strain was most likely originated from the strains that already existed in China.
PCVAD in Asia
The situation regarding on PCVAD (Porcine circovirus associated diseases) in Asia is very similar to what was seen in North America, South America and EU. PCVAD used to be a significant problem that caused high post-weaning mortality in Asian swine industry a couple of years ago; however, since commercial PCV2 vaccines became available in most of Asian countries, PCVAD problem seemed to be settled down. Although the current standard intervention strategy for PCVAD in Asia is pig vaccination, there are also some interests to try to determine whether commercial PCV2 vaccine can contribute to improve reproductive performance in sows.
Conclusions
Asian swine industries play significant roles in global pig business. More advanced scientific knowledge and technology on swine health is needed for the swine producing countries in Asia, in order that they can develop to become competitive in global swine business in the future.
