BOAR STUD FARM AND ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION.

Artificial insemination cooperative Cobiporc opened a large and efficient new boar stud for 300 male animals working on the principle that With modern knowledge and techniques, it is possible to keep diseases out. The new stud, developed and owned by French cooperative Cobiporc and taken into use in February 2015, houses in total 300 boars and is ready for the future. Cobiporc is an artificial insemination (AI) cooperative headquartered in the heart of Brittany, France. The cooperative has 1,800 pork producing customers in Brittany and its neighbouring regions of Lower Normandy and Pays de la Loire. The organisation holds about 60% of the total AI market in the west of France, and about 40% in the whole of France. Its genetics are 80% Piétrain or Duroc-Piétrain, animals with a generally low fat rate. The new boar stud replaces three other sites, which together had about 350 boars. The farm is U-shaped. On the left and on the right side are the boar quarters, with 15 rooms of 20 pens, one pen per boar of 2x3 metres, equipped with solid feeding systems, central ventilation and geothermal heating. In the middle, centrally located, is the collection area – with an adjacent laboratory. Bio security Several elements can be a source of contamination – air, animals, people and equipment – and for each a large protocol has been set up in order to avoid it.A modern filtration system has been applied to filter all incoming air. Particles of very small size will be caught so that the particles cannot enter the farm. "We filter out 99.5% of everything that comes in," explains Trelhu. Inside the farm building there is an under pressure, so automatically all air is drawn in through the filters. Interestingly, a good air quality inside the building contributes to a better hygiene and health status of the boar stud. One of the aspects of better air quality starts underneath the pig house – in the manure pens, as the goal is to get urine and faeces out as quickly and efficiently as possible. Inside the barns this happens by manually moving about 2 kg of daily faeces per boar into a separate hole in the corner of each pen. Underneath the pen, the slurry pit has two slopes. Across the breadth of the room, slopes of the slurry pit rises by 10% to either side from the middle; across the length of the room the slurry pit slopes up by 1.5% all the way up to the end. This ensures all urine to flow gently towards a central collection point underneath the farm. At the same time, underneath the floor, there is also an automatic scraping device, supplied by French pig cooperative Cooperl, that will push any faeces of the boars once a day in the opposite direction of the urine – up the slope of 1.5%. This way a daily separation of solid and liquid manure is ensured. The solid manure can be used as fertilizer, the liquid manure can directly be applied on the land, and the air inside the pig house is relatively clean. The pigs are being continuously tested for their health quality. Upon entrance, they go into a seven-week quarantine and all their blood values are tested. In addition, every week one-fifth of all the boars get their blood tested as well, this means that in about three months the Cobiporc team has checked the entire boar population for diseases – this includes Aujeszky's Disease (pseudorabies), brucellosis, PRRS and swine influenza. People are required to shower upon entrance and wear specific clothes for this farm. There is a different shower sluice for the laboratory staff and the boar caretakers. Not only inside is biosecurity a hot issue – outside the boar stud the biosecurity protocol goes further. After quality control checking (more about that later), the packed semen is picked up by the same dedicated van, which does nothing else but bring the semen from this facility to the central distribution building of Cobiporc near Rennes, the capital of Brittany, about 30 km down the road. In this place, all semen from all other stations are also combined, after which the right packaging can follow and further distribution to pig breeders follows. The van is the only transport vehicle that is allowed to enter the boar stud's. (story from materials from pig progress.)

ZIKA VIRUS INFECTION AND SEX.

A rare case of the Zika virus being transmitted through sex, not a mosquito bite, has been reported in the US.A patient infected in Dallas, Texas, is likely to have been infected by sexual contact, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) told the BBC The person had not travelled to infected areas but their partner had returned from Venezuela. Zika is carried by mosquitoes and has been linked to thousands of babies being born with underdeveloped brains. It is spreading through the Americas and the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the disease linked to the virus a global public health emergency. The American Red Cross has meanwhile urged prospective blood donors returning from Zika-hit countries to wait at least 28 days before donating their blood. The "self-deferral" should apply to people returning from Mexico, the Caribbean or Central or South America during the past four weeks, the Red Cross said in a statement. If Zika can readily spread through sex, then it poses a risk to every country not just those with the Aedes mosquito. The authorities have said sexual transmission is rare, but last year they would have said any case of Zika was rare, too. This explosive outbreak has caught the world by surprise and many key questions remain unanswered. Exactly how common or rare is sexual transmission? Can it be spread by the 80% of people who show no symptoms? How long does the virus persist in semen? When is it safe to have sex again? What should men do after visiting affected countries? Can women also spread the virus through sex? However, this is not a new HIV/Aids moment. HIV infection is incurable and dramatically shortens lives without daily medication. Zika infections are short, mild and pose a significant threat only in pregnancy. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director for CDC, said this was the first case it had dealt with involving a "non-traveller"."We don't believe this was spread through mosquito bites, but we do believe it was spread through a sexual contact."A statement issued by the CDC said the best way to avoid Zika virus infection was "to prevent mosquito bites and to avoid exposure to semen from someone who has been exposed to Zika".The case is "significant" if it was definitely transmitted through sexual contact, Alaka Basu, a senior fellow for public health at the UN Foundation. Story credit BBC.