Michael Strauss

Great question! With products in this category, heat treatment is the primary pathogen kill step. To properly process the material into dry specific temperatures, and sometimes time/temperature relationships, achieve the final product while ensuring the kill step. An important secondary kill step, no less important and no less effective, is that these viruses cannot survive for more than a shor ...

Mr. Rath, you are missing the point entirely. Removing animal proteins from the diet and replacing them with vegetable proteins - if fed from a contaminated environment - achieves nothing. The key is noting that processing techniques used for these proteins achieve multiple pathogen kill steps and so as produced are free of these viruses. Removing porcine plasma, dried porcine solubles, and oth ...

From what I have read I do believe there may be significant exposure to PEDv environmentally. Let me be clear, though, that this is likely not the same as with these feed ingredients as PED cells seen environmentally have not undergone the heat treatment common to feeds (which is what inactivates the virus). Good sanitation SOPs are critical.

Dave, thanks for keeping this thread going. The University of Minnesota and the USDA Swine Health Monitoring Project both did feeding trials where they fed a control group feed which was inoculated with live virus and the test group which used feed which had tested PCR positive. The control group all got PEDv and the test group did not, thus they each concluded that the PCR positive feed samples ...

I don't think the question is one of whether or not one can grow the virus in the lab. The problem seems to be that some have pointed the finger at feeds which have tested PCR positive for the presence of virus, but the bioassay results demonstrate that the cells seen in these feed ingredients are not infectious. Some normally smart people are talking about continued PCR testing as a litmus test ...

The University of Minnesota has published a report of a bioassay to evaluate the infectiousness of feed samples that had tested positive for PED virus by PCR alongside a control group inoculated with three different dilutions of PEDV- positive material obtained from clinical cases submitted to the Minnesota VDL. The report summarizes as follows: "We were able to reproduce Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea ...

When will CFIA complete and make public test results which determine if pelleted feed contains infectious virus cells or simply dead virus cells (which show up on PCR tests, leading to statements that these feeds test positive for the PED virus without making a distinction between living (infectious) and dead cells?

It is my understanding that PCR testing has determined the presence of the PED virus, however, these tests cannot distinguish between infectious virus cells and dead virus cells. The bioassay results are stated as preliminary and antibody tests are still in process. If you have official information that a controlled test has proven that piglets fed plasma or other items which have tested positiv ...