News

PEDv discovered at Oklahoma livestock show

The porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDv) has been discovered at a junior livestock show in Oklahoma.

Roy Lee Lindsey, director of the Oklahoma Pork Council, says pigs at the Oklahoma Youth Expo started getting sick earlier this week.

“We asked a veterinarian to walk through the barn and see what they thought, and our vets came back and said they should send some samples off for testing, (which) we did. We got confirmation of positive for PEDv in the middle of the night Wednesday night.”

He tells Brownfield swine show officials are notifying attendees of what precautions need to be taken.

Lindsey is confident the PEDv cases in Oklahoma will remain isolated because the pigs involved are not part of the commercial herd.

“Most of these facilities are pretty isolated, they’re isolated from one another (and) from commercial production. So I don’t anticipate that this is going to have a big impact outside of just the kids that were here.”

He stresses that while PEDv is a highly infectious swine disease, it is not a threat to human health and that pork is safe to eat.