Farmscape for March 4, 2020

The Veterinary Counsel with the Canadian Pork Council says African Swine Fever research underway in Canada is focussing on both detection and surveillance strategies and the development of tools to prevent and kill the infection.
Although North America has remained free of African Swine Fever, the virus continues to move internationally, with new infections reported on a weekly basis throughout eastern Europe, throughout China and southeast Asia and there have been recent announcements out of the Philippines and Greece.
Dr. Egan Brockhoff, the Veterinary Counsel with the Canadian Pork Council and a member of the Swine Innovation Porc Coordinated African Swine Fever Research Working Group, says Canada is collaborating with other nations to help address the virus.

Clip-Dr. Egan Brockhoff-Canadian Pork Council:
Canada has two centres that are working on African Swine Fever research with the viruses and that would be our National Centre for Foreign Animal Disease in Winnipeg and the VIDO-InterVac location in Saskatoon.
The Winnipeg lab is primarily focussing on diagnostics, so virus detection in the field, rapid virus detection in different scenarios with oral fluids, with blood tests, all looking at ways to support surveillance and rapid detection of the disease and then, after we eliminate the disease, disease surveillance to ensure we don't have it.
That's their primary research, detection and surveillance.
VIDO-InterVac has a number of different projects ongoing, including vaccine research, so development of an ASF vaccine and also working on a number of projects around antiviral for this virus, tools that could be used to kill the virus.

Dr. Brockhoff says that's the great coordinated research that's happening.
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Bruce Cochrane.

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