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Sunday, February 20, 2011
Ind. Courts - "Debate on containing hog virus may yet have long way to go" [Updated]
Fascinating, lengthy story today by Jeff Swiatek in the Indianapolis Star business section. It begins:
Three years ago, TDM Farms, one of the nation's largest hog producers, tried a new tactic to fight the hard-to-treat PRRS virus on its farms.More from later in the story:It was a tactic borrowed from the "chickenpox parties" that many mothers used to hold for their young children, hoping to expose them to the childhood disease early and avoid infections later in life when chickenpox can be much worse.
TDM's version of the chickenpox party was an "acclimation farm" built in Tippecanoe County. There, TDM intentionally began exposing 200 of its healthy young sows each month to an especially virulent form of the PRRS virus. By catching the disease early, the sows gained immunity to it, so the virus wouldn't bother them once they're breeding and are more vulnerable.
What TDM didn't bank on was the virus spreading to its nearest neighbor a mile away. Which, alleges the neighbor, Alan Wilhoite, is exactly what happened in July 2009, with devastating results.
The virus laid waste to Wilhoite's barn, which was filled with hundreds of pregnant sows, causing more than 270 aborted baby pigs and 30 sow deaths.
In October, Tippecanoe Superior Court Judge Thomas H. Busch denied TDM's motion to throw out the case for lack of evidence. He said there's enough evidence in Wilhoite's favor to let the lawsuit go on.[Updated at 3:00 pm] This story from Indiana Legislative Insight, which went to press last Friday, adds context to today's report:TDM has appealed that denial to the Indiana Court of Appeals, where the case is pending.
In its appeal, TDM frames the lawsuit as a threat to Indiana's hog industry.
"This kind of lawsuit turns the Indiana pork industry into a circular firing squad, and creates a negative legal climate for pork producers generally."
You've probably not heard anything about this, but Indiana pork producers are embroiled in a nasty controversy over Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS), with pork producers with sow farrowing units finding themselves facing off against hog finishers over what is found as both a reproductive disease and a respiratory illness. Litigation has been filed over some of these issues, the Indiana State Veterinarian has been brought into the mix, and out-of-state producers have been accused of acting like Hoosier moms whose children's friends have chicken pox: deliberately infecting their stock in Indiana, putting other Indiana stock at risk, and then transporting the then-PRRS-immune hogs back out of state.The Indiana State Board of Animal Health is surveying veterinarians to gauge the prevalence of PRRS, and is plotting the location of PRRS-infected herds through both voluntary reporting and the state's herd premises database that we told you about a few years ago. BOAH also reactivates the Swine Health Advisory Committee to help advise the State Veterinarian on whether special actions, such as testing pigs or limiting movement of herds should be mandated.
State Veterinarian Bret Marsh reminded a gathering of industry officials in late January that BOAH has considerable emergency authority at its disposal, but recognizes that "We could quarantine and wreck the whole pork industry in our state if we aren't careful. Indiana's pork industry is so interwoven with other states and Canada that we can't make regulatory decisions in isolation. One thing I've learned as a regulator is that before you quarantine, you had better know the criteria that needs to be met to lift the quarantine." No one at that working meeting favored a quarantine under conditions as they then existed.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 20, 2011 10:58 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts | Indiana Government