Cargill gives $150,000 for PED virus feed research

As the first anniversary of confirmation of the porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) virus in the United States nears, the National Pork Board continues to build an arsenal of information based on its nearly $2 million in Pork Checkoff-funded research funded to date. This work will be aided by a decision by Cargill's Animal Nutrition and Pork Businesses to donate $150,000 for additional PED virus research directed by the National Pork Board.
"Cargill is committed to supporting research priorities related to PEDv," said Douglas Cook, director of innovation at Cargill's Provimi North America business, which includes the Akey brand, in Brookville, Ohio. "Cargill's Animal Nutrition and Pork businesses are pleased to provide the National Pork Board with funding to be used for PEDv feed-related research priorities to advance knowledge on this critical topic for everyone in the pork industry."
Paul Sundberg, National Pork Board's vice president of science and technology, said this investment is a welcome addition to the series of funding coming from groups outside of Pork Checkoff that will help further leverage Checkoff-funded research into the costly disease.
"Our main goal with this round of research is to find answers to PEDv and feed-related questions as quickly and efficiently as possible," Sundberg said. "We appreciate the funding by Cargill and will continue to collaborate with all pork industry stakeholders to get practical results for farmers to use to save their pigs."
The top research priorities for this group of projects are:
• To investigate the effectiveness and cost of treatments that could be used to mitigate the survival of PED virus and other viruses in feeds
• To conduct contamination risk assessments at all steps within the feed processing and delivery chain
• To develop a substitute for the currently used swine bioassay procedures
• To continue to investigate the risk of feed systems and other pathways for pathogen entry into the U.S.