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. 2023 May 7;13(9):1565.
doi: 10.3390/ani13091565.

The Impact of PRRS Eradication Program on the Production Parameters of the Hungarian Swine Sector

István Szabó  1 , Imre Nemes  1 , László Búza  2 , Ferenc Polyák  3 , Ádám Bálint  4 , Gábor Fitos  5 , Derald J Holtkamp  6 , László Ózsvári  7   8
Affiliations

The Impact of PRRS Eradication Program on the Production Parameters of the Hungarian Swine Sector

István Szabó et al. Animals (Basel). .

Abstract

Background: The Hungarian national eradication program of PRRS was successfully completed between 2014 and 2022. There were doubts about the efficiency of the eradication program in Hungary from the beginning to the tune that it might only be carried out efficiently through depopulation-repopulation of the infected herds, which is a very costly procedure. In our study, we investigated the impact of the depopulation-repopulation procedure, which played a prominent role in the PRRS eradication program on the productivity of the Hungarian swine sector-namely, on the number of slaughter pigs per sow per year and the total live slaughter weight per sow per year.

Material and methods: Since 2014, we monitored the evolution of the PRRS eradication through the depopulation-repopulation approach on the large-scale breeding herds in Hungary. Most producers replaced their herds with animals that were free of PRRS and other infectious diseases (mycoplasmosis, actinobacillosis, swine dysentery, atrophic rhinitis, etc.). On this basis, we evaluated the change in the number of slaughter pigs per sow per year as a consequence of depopulation-repopulation of the herds being carried out. In the statistical analysis linear regression was used.

Conclusions: The results of our study demonstrate that the PRRS eradication program with the herd depopulation-repopulation approach led to a considerable improvement of the productivity of Hungarian pig farming. This result also demonstrates that, independent of the PRRS eradication, it is still necessary to consider investments into the individual production units to increase efficiency, and to carry out herd depopulation-repopulation in cases where the current genetics limits improvements in productivity.

Keywords: PRRS; eradication program; production parameters.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The calculation method of the number of slaughter pigs produced per sow per year in Hungary.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Linear regression analysis of the association between the year and the slaughtered pigs[head]/sow/year and the average live weight of slaughtered pigs[kg/sow/year].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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