Market News & Headlines >> FIRST VACCINE FOR PEDV

 A little over a year after porcine epidemic diarrhea virus was first diagnosed in the United States, Harrisvaccines of Ames, Iowa, has received conditional licensing for a vaccine against the deadly virus that has killed an estimated 8 million or more piglets.

Harrisvaccines has been selling the new product – the first vaccine against PEDV to be made commercially available -- through veterinary prescription, totaling about 2 million doses since late last year. It is being administered to sows in both infected and nonn-infected herds. Based on experiments, some of them with very small numbers, the company’s head of sales and marketing, Joel Harris, says “it’s definitely boosting immunity in sows [which then pass on the immunity to piglets].”

The conditional licensing will allow over-the-counter sales but the company must continue to test effectiveness. A conditionally licensed product must show a reasonable expectation of efficacy and all safety and purity requirements must be met.

Clearly, the market impact will depend on how effective the vaccine is in protecting piglets against the virus. NPPC’s chief veterinarian, Liz Wagstrom cautions that it has been difficult in the past to develop effective vaccines for diseases that cause extreme diarrhea in swine and urges that strict biosecurity measures continue to be employed. However, widespread availability of a vaccine is good news to producers and consumers and potentially bad news to market prices.