UK breeder warns of swine disease threat

The United Kingdom needs to tighten up its import controls on meat and animals to prevent a mutant strain of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) virus entering the country and devastating the national herd, warns a leading British pig breeder.
Stephen Curtis, chairman of breeding company ACMC, claims the new highly pathogenic PRRS poses as great a risk as foot-and-mouth disease to the British pig industry. He is concerned that it could find its way into the country through illegally imported exotic meat products.
Curtis has seen the results of the highly transmissible disease in several Asian countries, such as Cambodia, where herds have suffered 20% to 30% mortality in their breeding sows, an 80% rate of spontaneous abortion and piglet mortality rates approaching 100%.
U.K. pigs are unlikely to have immunity through cross-protection, he warns, and current vaccines against PRRS may not be fully effective in combating the highly pathogenic form. Curtis suggests that the British industry should draw up its own code of practice for increased import controls.