Growing pig incidence rate, control and prevention of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus in a large pig production system in the United States

BACKGROUND: In 2013, PEDV was introduced in the United States (U.S.) and rapidly spread across the country. Here we describe the occurrence of PEDV in the growing pig herd of one large U.S. production system through an active surveillance set in place between October 2019 and November 2020 designed to assess disease status upon placement into the growing pig site, before shipping to the slaughter plant and when diarrhea events were present at the site. We also assessed the impact of preventive procedures implemented in PEDV incidence that comprised site-specific equipment segregation and biosecurity changes regarding personnel movement between sites. RESULTS: 36.50% (100/274) of the sites had at least one PEDV introduction event before preventive procedures were implemented, yielding an incidence rate of 2.41 per 100 farm-weeks. Most (63/100) of them occurred in sites where animals were placed negative and PEDV was detected in clinical samples in a median of 8 weeks post placement. After preventive procedures were implemented, the overall PEDV incidence rate dropped to 0.37 per 100 farm-weeks (84.65% reduction, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: These results highlight the importance of systematic surveillance to identify the burden of diseases, areas of improvement in prevention and control, and to allow the measurement of the impact of policy/protocol changes.