(Tape starts mid-comment)

-Dr. Monte McCaw

\- then again, doesn't do much (laughter). Sorry, Carlos. Still with
great respect. (laughter) Well, he saved my kiester in my Ph.D.
proposal, so I think we're -- I don't know if you remember that day,
Carlos. But at any rate, trying to save myself.You pointed out when
you're teaching respiratory immunology that the antibody classes for IgA
and the upper respiratory tract, IgG in the lower. And we've talked
today, Brad's worked a lot on passive decay, with, there are
potentiallydifferent rates of passive decay, could we lose -- or could
the pig lose IgA -- (tape interrupts)

(crowd noises)

March 7, 2002:

Dr. Comyn: Good morning, everybody, and thanks for coming out here so
early. And I hope you're at least enjoying some of the food on the table
over there. Again, thanks for coming back for the second day, and we
look forward to having an enjoyable morning. And I'm going to let Dr.
Burnsteel just say a couple of words about the breakout sessions, and
then we'll go on with our program. Thanks.

DR. BURNSTEEL: Again, one last time, it looks like we have most of the
people signed up, but if you haven't, this is the sheet. And I'm going
to put it on that table right there, since we're in here and there's a
note thing on the table outside there. But if you haven't signed up, go
ahead and sign up. I think there's people everywhere where we have
numbers, but then there's dots below the numbers. So if you haven't
signed up, please do. Thanks.

Dr. Comyn: Thank you, Cindy. OK, this morning's session, session three,
is Perspectives on Evaluating Therapeutic Effective Against Mycoplasmal
Pneumonia. And our first speaker, speaking from a pork producer's
viewpoint, is Dr. John Korslund. Dr. Korslund is a 1976 Iowa State
University grad; he recently completed the EVP program at University of
Illinois. And his presentation, he actually has some very interesting
information about his facility and about his practice. So I'll let him
cover that -- he's really got it -- covered very nicely. Anyway, please
welcome Dr. Korslund.

DR. KORSLUND: Am I wired? OK. Let's see, where's the pointer. OK. Well,
I have the unenviable position of being a practitioner-producer that
follows a bunch of experts that have already talked about several of the
things I was planning to talk about. And I don't have a laptop, so I
couldn't modify my presentation too much.

But I was thinking back this morning about what I liked best about
school, and I always liked story time (laughter), when the teacher kind
of let us sit back and listen to a story. And I've got a little bit of
extra time, so I'm going to rush you through some of the things that
Monte McCaw and Eileen and Brad and some of those talked about yesterday
that I had kind of covered in my talk, and will cover it again a little
bit faster.

First of all, I guess -- why don't you advance one slide? Oh! Oh, it did
show. Just wanted to show I do have a farm; that's kind of a
long-distance view of the farm I grew up on, still run today. You can
see the big silo there in the front. That -- let's see if I can figure
out the button here. We grew up milking cows -- ah, right way. Uh Had a
dairy farm; I grew up and decided I wasn't going to do that for a
living, (inaudible) too much to having to stay there.

We started raising pigs in the -- well, we grew up raising pigs, of
course, but specialized in pigs when I came back in 1979 and built a
farrowing and gestation nursery unit over here in 1979. And Roy, of
course, remember, that was the last boom year before the '80s when
interest rates soared and Iowa basically got out of the hog business and
North Carolina got into it in the '80s. So very typical father-son
partnership in the '80s, where we struggled, and land values dropped,
and we hung in there and that's kind of the history of my farming
operation.

The old barn here, of course, was from the generation before. It's about
ready to be bulldozed, as is the silo. On-farm grain storage, you really
can't see; it's back behind the trees there. But we continue to
progress. Actually I rented out my farm ground this year; I'm going to
have that farmed by another entity. Grain farming is like everything
else: it takes a lot of acres to make it pay. And after enterprise
analysis, I decided that other people could do that more economically
than I could, so I'm going to be fulltime in hog production. And that's
just the way farming is going: hog production is getting so specialized
and grain production is getting so specialized, that that's the way
things are.

So anyway, I wanted to read from this book a little bit this morning,
because I think it has application to what we're talking about in
mycoplasma, even. This is a book by Robert Reich -- do you remember him?
He was the Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton. And the book is
entitled "The Future of Success," and I think we can apply it a little
bit to what we're talking about, even those of us in government and
industry as well as those of us in production or as advisers to
producers. And it's called, this particular section's called "The
Necessity of Better, Faster, and Cheaper."

*(He reads)* The economic system that dominated most of the 20^th^
century afforded our producers and sellers a fairly relaxed existence.
Economies of production, scale, and stable markets, with the
corresponding oligopolies and regulations produced large enterprises
against unruly competition. Small neighborhood sellers competed only
with other local shops and services.

With enterprises, as with people, a comfortable existence tends to
weaken motivation to hard work. The old industrial economy did not, for
the most part, ignite great entrepreneurial zeal. Big companies
maintained research and development departments that produced a steady,
respectable output of patented invention, but major breakthroughs were
rare and intended to be so: too much change would threaten the capacity
to plan, and might destabilize the system.

Most innovation occurred at the margin and cosmetic design rather than
in the basics. Automobile tailfins grew longer, but the quality of
suspensions and engines improved only gradually. New and improved
dishwashing detergents and kitchen appliances appeared with predictable
regularity, but were never especially new nor very improved.

By the middle decades of the 20^th^ century, sellers could be relaxed
about controlling their costs. With unions negotiating wage rates for
entire industries, wage increases could be passed along to consumers in
the form of higher prices without imperiling any particular company. Nor
were sellers interested in squeezing their suppliers unduly. Any
changes, a supplier threatened the efficiency of large-scale production,
whose smooth flows required long-term contracts and stable
relationships.

As a result of these accommodations of employees and suppliers, wages
and prices tend to spiral upward. Price increases raised the cost of
living, which caused workers to seek additional wage increases.
Occasionally, government sought to control wages and prices directly by
establishing official wage and price ceilings, or by jaw-boning
industrial and union wages to keep prices within bounds. But to no great
effect. Inflationary cycles gathered momentum until the Federal Reserve
Board raised interest rates and plunged the economy into recession. *(He
breaks from reading)* That's what I was talking about in the early
1980s, and I vividly remember that, and some of you, of course, do too.

*(He resumes reading)* Emerging economy provides a telling contrast*.
(He breaks from reading)* And we're talking about that today.

*(He resumes reading)* As noted, buyers are less constrained by
production scale, distance, or information. With access to a widening
choice of products and services coming from almost anywhere on the
globe, and armed with better comparative data about price and quality,
buyers can more easily switch to something better. The easier it is for
buyers to switch to a better deal, the harder sellers have to work to
attract them and to keep them.

Some researchers credit the recent upsurges in innovation and
productivity exclusively and simply to new technologies. But they're
leaving out the crucial steps that explain why sellers feel far more
compelled to innovate. New technologies of communication,
transportation, and information are empowering buyers to find and switch
to something better. This in turn is putting pressure on sellers to
produce better. In order to survive and prosper, sellers must
continuously cut costs and add value faster than their rivals.

Not only do they have to offer better products and services, but they
also have to continuously improve their organizations to make them
capable of generating whole streams of better products and services
faster than their competition. This trend helps explain when inflations
become less of a threat, even during periods of low unemployment,
sellers continuously have to find new ways to slash costs and lower
their prices in order to stay competitive. It also sheds light on why,
after slumping in the 1970s, productivity -- that is, output put unit of
labor input -- has been rising. Companies have been under increasing
pressure to do more with less.

Fierce competition has spread to non-profit institutions as well. *(He
breaks from reading)* Those of you in the FDA might want to think about
this*. (He resumes reading)* Even the stuffiest, most hidebound
universities, hospitals, museums, and charities must now innovate,
because they are subject to the same underlying dynamic that's affecting
the rest of the economy. Attendees, patrons, and donors have an
increasingly wider choice from which to pick, better information about
how each institution is performing, and greater capacity to switch to
one that satisfies them more. So non-profits have to be better, faster,
and cheaper, too. *(He breaks from reading)*

Well, I'll quit with that, but it was an interesting analysis of what's
happening. Bill Hollis and I were talking on the way back yesterday
about the Ag economy and how what we see now is normal agreed that
probably what we see now is going to normal, that the good days are
going to basically come back; we're going to have to learn how to adapt
and stay with what we've got for a price structure and a cost structure,
and tough competition and tight margins are just going to be the way
it's going to be. And I think those of you in the pharmaceutical
industry probably feel the same way.

It isn't any fun, but there's just no end to it. And I don't see
anything macro that's going to change the environment we're in, so we
better learn to adapt to it and get better, faster, cheaper
continuously. Because, as suppliers, that's what we're facing. And as we
bring it back to mycoplasma, we have to keep thinking about that with
regard to this bug, it's a drag in productivity, so how do we get
better, faster, and cheaper in regards to this bug, I guess.

Getting back to the farm a little bit, in other talks I've given -- and
I don't have this overhead with me, but -- I used to, people ask, "Why
do we have to get bigger? Why does the pork production have to keep --
?" In Iowa this is a big issue; there's those lifestyle farmers that
say, "Why does Iowa pork production have to change, or Midwest pork
production? Why can't we stay at a family-size farm?" or what they
perceive to be a family-size farm.

And I did a graphic one time where I said, "Well, if a farmer is making
\$10 a head on a 4,000-pig or feeder-pig operation, that nets him
\$40,000 a year. At the time I did it that was kind of a living wage for
a family. And I graphed it out; if they had 4% inflation a year, and if
margins dropped to \$7 a head because of increased productivity over
those 10 years, in 10 years that farmer had to have 8300 head -- with
that cost-of-living increase -- to have the same buying power. And so he
basically had to more than double his production in 10 years just to
have the same buying power that he had back at the base period.

Well, we're about halfway through that period now, from the time when I
first did that calculation. So I suppose at this time you'd have to be
somewhere in the 6,000-head range just to stay even. And of course,
people don't like to hear that, and Extension didn't like to preach that
type of message, because that's hard for -- a hard message to preach to
those that don't want to change or don't see the need to change.

So there again, how does this relate to mycoplasma? And add to the
treatment and approval process is what we're really talking about today
for new drugs and modalities to treat this disease.

And I think we're looking at -- first of all, there's a couple ways it
affects it. First of all, productivity enhancement and cost containment
and production -- those areas that we as veterinarians and as producers
look at. We've got to find ways to do things faster, better, cheaper,
out on the farm, and have products that do that. My other big concern, I
guess, is those of who in the pharmaceutical industry -- I get real
concerned when I can see spin-offs and buyouts. It looks to me like
there's less and less corporate interest in funding products, new
products, in the industry. The big money's going to the human side of
the equation.

That really concerns me, because there's apparently a greater return on
investment or return on rate of return for human products than there is
for animal health products. And if the money isn't there to invest in
new products, we're not going to have them out on the farm. And every
time I see a Monsanto or the pair of Monsantos spinning those type of
companies off, I get real concerned that those products aren't going to
be in the pipeline.

And on the government side, I get real concerned from the standpoint of
can the government respond quick enough and fast enough,
regulatory-wise, to get products out to us. Or are we so tied up in
regulations that the response time isn't there? Can our laws respond
quick enough to get products to us as the knowledge base increases, so
that when --diseases aren't simple anymore. Like mycoplasma is a good
example. And can our case law and our regulations respond quick enough
to meet the needs of writing the regulations?

And I'm just a practitioner with not a lot of advance degrees -- and a
producer, I guess, too -- but I don't have a lot of advanced degrees, so
I can't write the law. But looking at it from the big picture, I think
that's something we have to struggle with, all of us in this room, how
do we effectively and smartly write and lobby legislators to write laws
that can address these issues to keep us competitive in a world market.
Because we're facing competitors in South America, in Eastern Europe,
that'll be big competitors in the next 20 to 30 years, that may not have
to face the same challenges we face legally.

I think there's some kind of revealing things happening that they might
have to face some worldwide standards that all of us will face, but how
this is all going to come together is, of course, a big mystery for the
next 10 or 20 years.

Ten percent of our products now exported, and that market is really at
risk as these new areas of the world develop. And if we had a 10 percent
drop in our exports, we are all basically out of business. There's no
choice for the U.S. to be an exporter at this point, because if 10
percent of our market went away tomorrow, basically the pork industry's
out of business. We'd have prices back under \$8 and I'd be looking
among your ranks for work. And half of you would be out of jobs, too
(laughs), so we be all doing something different.

The strong dollars an export tax on us; it makes exports compare really
tough. There's a higher cost structure here in the U.S. due to our
living standards and higher cost structure in labor. So we're in a
tough, tough world market, and we all have to get faster, better,
cheaper because of that.

The feedstuffs are going offshore, I think, are continuing to go
offshore. The government program basically props up our land prices to
keep our feedstuffs at a worldwide price. So the growth potential's in
Brazil, South America, Brazil and Argentina, and probably longer term in
the Ukraine, Eastern Europe and that area. So I think the long-term
growth potential for the livestock industry is probably also in those
areas.

So we're all going to become multinational in a way, I think. I'm sure
the drug companies will become that way; I think the meat market's going
to become multinational in the next 50 years. So long term, I guess,
that's my best crystal ball. And I'm 50 so I've got about 25 years to
worry about, because I'll probably have to work 'til I'm 75 (laughter).

But let's get back to mycoplasma. I'm kind of an amateur futurist, I
guess, but I think we need to look at the big picture once in a while,
and it's easier to do after a meal and after breakfast, and that way I
don't have to talk about the stuff I really don't know much about
(laughter). Why don't we move onto the next slide?

My credentials -- just keep -- yeah, go ahead and click them all on. My
credentials -- first of all, I've got extensive clinical experience; *n*
equals one herd (laughter); that's kind of a limiting factor. But I do
have 40 years among hogs. I started out as a 10-year-old with a 4-H
project, and I've kind of been around hogs ever since. Did animal
science two years at Iowa State, then got into that school, and been
around them ever since. I do attend a lot of meetings, love to read, so
if it's about hogs I try to read it.

I guess my biggest credential was I was on Beth Lautner's list, and when
she needed a producer to come talk at this meeting, I got called
(laughter). So go ahead to the next page.

This is kind of what Monte talked about yesterday, and some of the other
speakers. But go ahead and click them all on; as long as I don't have
the pointer, I think it's just easier to do it that way.

When we think about the 1970s pig or the continuous flow pig, I got to
thinking, it's kind of like that old truck there. It's driven on the
gravel; the drive is leisurely. With the continuous flow pig, they were
mixed infections; there was mixed immunity. You put little pigs in one
end of the building; you took the big ones out the other end. You kind
of had continuous treatment.

As I recall, I don't think Dad ever really had CTC completely out of the
rations. He was always there to lower the level, and when we pulsed it
up at higher doses when we needed it. If the weather looked bad, you
might put 300 or 400 grams in. We had an on-farm mill, and I hate to
think some of the combinations that might have gone in there once in a
while.

ASP was used when they were little, with sulfa and penicillin along with
the "Aureo". Mycoplasma was always in those pigs. We didn't have much
for diagnostic tests; you just knew it was there. And I'm sure immunity
was there early on, maternal immunity. And I think the infection just
kind of rolled through the population. Sometimes they coughed; sometimes
they didn't. And we didn't really have production records to know what
was going on. So the production kind of ebbed and flowed. OK, why don't
you go to the next slide.

Well, this is the 2002 pig. He's driven on a racetrack; he's driven on a
racetrack for a reason. We found out that you've got to have a pig going
faster to stay competitive in this business. How many of you are
familiar with Dr. Staley's work at Iowa State on immune system
activation? And we've all decided that that pig can perform a lot better
if we don't activate his immune system as hard.

And basically, to stay competitive in this industry, you can't activate
that immune system as much; you need that energy and protein that you're
putting into that pig to go toward production. And every time you divert
some of it for fighting disease, you're going to cut production some.
We've got a pig now that can go to 53 to 54 percent lean in the same
amount of time that the pig that could go to 48 percent lean 20 years
ago. So we're putting a lot more muscle on the pig in the same amount of
time, and we're trying to do it without disease.

So that's why the pig's on the fast track, and the track is fast and the
track is crowded. When you've got -- like they were talking yesterday,
Brad was talking about four buildings of 4,000 pigs in a square mile, or
four building sites of 4,000 pigs, that's 60,000 pigs in a square mile.
That's a crowded track. First of all, you've got 4,000 pigs in one site.
Second of all you've got four times four in a square mile. So you've got
a lot of potential for crashes, and you've got a very crowded track, and
they're all trying to move real fast.

So you've got fewer resident infections, 'cause these little guys have
been weaned early; they're fairly naïve on bugs that are within 'em.
You've got little natural immunity because they've been weaned early,
and you've no new pigs 'til the old ones are moved out, supposedly. So
you've got a lot of naivety in those -- this is all stuff that was
talked about yesterday.

Then you've got management plans that basically say, "We're not going to
treat 'em because it's not cost-effective, and we think we've got a plan
that's eliminated pathogens, so we don't need antibiotics, or treatment
antibiotics in the feed or water."

We've also got a philosophy out there -- not a philosophy but a belief,
possibly, that the mycoplasma are not there. And in reality, it is. So
the bottom line is production is either very high or very low. If things
go perfectly, you have great production. If the immune system doesn't
get activated, those pigs just smoke. But if they don't smoke, they
crash; they hit the wall. Literally hit the 18-week wall, I guess.

Why don't you move onto the next slide. And just click all the way
through; we'll look at 'em -- I basically did a contrast slide here. On
a continuous flow, they're weaned older, you get pathogen transfer, you
had immunity wear-down, rolling infection, non-massive dose, and
antibiotic suppression. Whereas under separate sites, you have 'em
weaned younger, with less pathogen transfer, greater immunity at weaning
-- I'm talking about pathogen immunity. You tend to get epidemic
infection, especially of viruses -- or (*cell phone rings)* -- I'll get
rid of that; people have a knack for calling me when I talk.

Then you end up with a massive dose of organisms and you have no
antibiotic suppression because you're assuming that you're not going to
need it. So that's kind of a contrast between the '70s pig and the 2000
pig. Go ahead to the next slide.

Now, as far as our program, what we've been doing in ours -- and this
has worked for us, but remember, *n* equals one, and we're relatively
isolated in our finishing sites, so it's worked for us, but y'know, this
is strictly a one-farm program. We do separate site in all our
production. The picture you saw there was our farrowing site; the sows
and the farrowing is on that site, and all the rest of our production is
off-site.

We do wean early, anywhere from 12 to 20 days, 24 days once in a while
if we're really slow on farrowings. We do run high levels of path
immunity, and basically what I'm saying there is we vaccinate the sow
herd, much to Eileen's chagrin, but we do vaccinate the sow herd,
especially the first, second, and third parity sows, with mycoplasma
vaccine.

Nursery antibiotics, we use Denaguard® and CTC in the SEW and transition
feeds, which are basically the first two nursery feeds; that's about 10
days. Then we follow that with Lincomix® in the Phase 1 feed, which is
about the next 2 ½, 2 to 2 ½ weeks. So they're on what I would call
mycoplasma suppression-type drugs for about 2 ½ to 3 weeks; then after
that they go on to Mecadox®, which is strictly an enteric-type drug.

So that's basically the extent of our mycoplasma program. We pass
immunity and antibiotics early on in the nursery program. We don't
vaccinate the finishing pigs at all. And we do some monitoring, which at
this point has been the standpoint of taking the blood that we use on
the pseudorabies monitoring program in Iowa, and do some serology work
on that every six months. Next slide.

This is the results, and I just got -- we did monitoring now in January,
and I got the results back in time for this meeting. First of all,
clinical disease has not been a problem. Coughing has been minimal. We
haven't done any PCRs, and I'd have to say pigs are not all *M. hyo*
free. We're going to go through each of the seven sites here in a second
with the results.

Other viral pathogens have been present, not so much that we've seen
them clinically but we've seen them serologically. But we haven't had
flare-ups of *M. hyo* (inaudible) with them higher with those viral
pathogens. So let's go on to the next slide.

I'll try to describe each site here as we go through the results. This
site is the one that I have that's somewhat continuous flow. Facilities
are 1970s, early '80s-type facilities. But this is a partial slats, two
different age groups; there aren't even really walls. It's one of those,
if I can get a few more finishing sites, I probably won't use it
anymore.

PRRSV is basically negative; I'm a little concerned about that one right
there, because I don't think I have PRRSV here, but I don't like that SP
ratio approaching 0.4. H1N1's been negative. H3N2 I think is negative;
there's a couple 40s, but there's no clinical evidence of coughing that
I've seen there. And I quite frankly don't know how to interpret those
type of low titers; I guess I'm not too worried about it.

We tested two ages of pigs there; four of them that were 7 months and
six that were 4.5. And I don't have the pigs separated, but I would be
willing to bet the four that were 7 months are the four that were
positive, probably.

DR. NABIL ANIS: What is SP ratio?

DR. KORSLUND: SP ratio? That's the reading on the ELISA test. Eileen,
can you explain that?

DR. EILEEN THACKER: Sample reading over the positive control. So they
can adjust it for each aspect.

DR. KORSLUND: Yeah, I don't understand that at all. All I know is .4 --
what's the cutoff point?

DR. EILEEN THACKER:For PRRSV it's .4 technically, although some people
look at a little bit lower as --

ANOTHER SPEAKER: Mycoplasma, I think, is 0.5.

DR. EILEEN THACKER: Point-five. I think it depends on the assay as to
what the cut-off is.

DR. KORSLUND: So for this one, I guess it looks to me like my pigs
seral-convert for mycoplasma, and some -- see, these pigs are 7 months
old, and these are kind of swag ages. I was doing it late at night, so
they're kind of sophisticated wild-ass guesses. And ages aren't exact,
but these were basically tail-enders that went to town about two days
later. And these are younger pigs.

So I think they're sero-converting very, very late in finishing. I'm
sure, if you PCR'd them they'd all be positive. But they aren't
clinically doing anything. Let's go to the next slide.

I label it "perfection." Maybe after listening to Carlos yesterday,
perfection is not the right word, 'cause I guess if you did slaughters
checks you'd probably find lesions in the lungs of these pigs. But PRRSV
is real good; no SIV in either of these bunches. Very low mycoplasma
tiders. These pigs are 7 months -- these are basically tail-enders also;
those pigs went to market either that week or the following week. Just
tail-enders; that room was almost cleaned out.

So I can't -- I wish every group closed out like that one. From a
titer's standpoint and also from a performance standpoint. We just
didn't lose pigs out of that room; that was an excellent close-out. Next
slide.

This was on the same site, East 80, we call it. Different building, and
what kind of surprised me about this set of data was look at the SIV
titers; we definitely had H1N1 in that building. We didn't get it in the
other building. And I thought it would have had SIV in all four
buildings, as easy as that spreads. And we're not exactly great on
bio-security, especially between two buildings on the same site where
the pigs are about the same age. But we didn't spread SIV from one
building to the other, and that really surprised me.

But the PRRSV, of course, is still negative. And on *M. --hyo.* we had
one positive out of the 10 animals, and that was barely positive. These
are just a little younger; it was basically the next age group down. So
basically the same story on it, that we're starting to sero-convert a
little bit of one pig here, but basically the same story on health. The
pigs are good and healthy, very little death loss. I don't have the
death loss data with me, but a good bunch of pigs. Let's go to the next
slide.

This is a bunch of pigs that are outside in deep bedding on a custom
basis. Little younger. PRRSV still negative, SIV and, I think I'd call
those both negative; there's one 40 there. But these pigs just smoked
for an outside facility. Of course, we had a good winter for 'em. They
had two bunches before that, I had problems of sero-syphilis and PRRSV
in the other. So they were just tickled pink to be feeding this bunch of
pigs. One positive pig, but I guess what it shows is you can have
healthy pigs outside, too, if the weather's right and you have the bugs
that don't get in there and bother 'em. We had just started selling off
this bunch when we blood-tested 'em. Next slide.

This was a trouble bunch, and the ironic thing was this is the other
half of the group out of the nursery from the bunch before it. These
went into a finishing building that's early '80s, late '70s-type
building, partial slats. They went PRRSV positive, and the ones that
were outside were PRRSV negative, out of the same nursery.

I'm suspecting lateral infection from neighboring buildings, area-spread
possibly. It's also possible that there was a seeder pig in here
somewhere from the sow herd. My sow herd's positive but stable. Y'know,
who knows. Anyway, they went positive, and I would guess they went
positive and then we got this Erysipelass outbreak afterwards. But man,
did we lose pigs from Erysipelas. And we vaccinated them twice -- we
vaccinated them once, and about 2 weeks later they got Erysipelas again,
and we vaccinated them again and that finally shut it down. But once we
got the Erysipelas shut down they didn't do too badly.

The mycoplasma never really came up on 'em. We had one positive, but the
PRRSV didn't set off the mycoplasma, but it sure set off the Erysipelas.
The flu, I think we had some H3 N 2 that got going a little bit in
there, 'cause there's a whole bunch of 40s. I don't know for sure; there
again, I need to talk to somebody that knows more about H-3N2 and SIV to
know if that's really significant or not. They didn't ever cough a lot
or show clinical flu, but who knows. Maybe they showed a little bit of
PRRSV.

But that's been a problem bunch; they're looking pretty good now, once
all the pigs that had Erysipelas either got pulled or died. But the
ironic thing to me was that this bunch that was in the building could be
so sick, and the other half that came from the nursery that went outside
could be so healthy. Go ahead and go to the next slide.

This is kind of an interesting bunch. It's a custom-fed bunch, the next
bunch down in age. This guy that takes care of 'em for me -- he's a
really good operator. He called me and said, "These pigs are coughing; I
think you better put something in the feed." The bin was ready to be
filled, and I said, "Well, thanks for warning me," and I put some
Denaguard®, CTC in the feed, 'cause it's either flu or mycoplasma, and I
thought I better be safe so I put it in. And this was just before we
blood-tested them, or like a week before, I suppose. This is what they
had.

So I probably wasted some money on some Denigard and CTC that I wouldn't
have had to have spent. We're fine on mycoplasma titers, PRRSV is fine,
but we've definitely spiked H3N2-titers on these pigs. There again,
still wasn't bad to add it from the standpoint of keeping the
secondaries down. But if we had a black box we could take down and swab
a pig or two and diagnose what the disease is on the spot, I could have
probably saved \$800-\$900 of feed medication by not spending money on
medication on these pigs, 'cause we could've diagnosed it as flu right
on the spot rather than spending the money. Let's go to the next slide.

Now we're down to 3 ½ month pigs on age, swag age again. There again,
this is right next-door, room-wise -- these are in separate buildings,
separate room -- they were just starting to spike some titers on the
H3N2, 'cause they were right next to the other group.

Here's three interesting titers here, and I was talking to Eileen the
other night at the swine veterinarians' meeting about these pigs. I
suspect those are still maternal titers, possibly, 'cause they're from
vaccinated pig. My sow herd is very high -- like a 1.9 or 2.0 average
parity. So I'm guessing they were running very high maternal titers, and
probably those pigs are carrying high maternal antibodies that still
have high SP ratios. 'Cause when I look at all my other pigs being
negative, and then I have a 3 ½ month old pig that's still carrying a
positive, I'm suspecting that's what's happening.

PRRSV still negative, so -- cause the pigs don't show any signs of
coughing or sickness that way, so. There's a little bit of a story
behind every -- it's interesting to correlate the tiders and the, what
you know about the history of the pigs.

I guess that's -- if you have questions about something in the groups
afterward or right now, you can sure ask 'em. It's interesting work; all
the titer work cost me about a thousand bucks, so that's the downside of
this, and individual farming -- it's fun to do this, but you can't do it
bunch after bunch after bunch; it just isn't cost-effective. But it does
tell you something. I think farmers are well-advised to do it
periodically, or in problem groups to learn what happened.

I justify it on the basis, first of all, for this meeting; second of
all, you're getting paid in Iowa to do the PRV testing so you're drawing
the blood anyway, so you don't have to have that expense. And you're
getting paid enough to do the blood work that you can kind of apply that
back toward the serology work, and so you can learn something and offset
the cost that way. But after '98 I've gotten a lot more hardnosed on
what I spend money for, and you just have to justify everything in your
mind before you spend money on anything. Let's go on to the next slide.

This is the cost of my program. I figure 60 cents for the vaccine; I'm
figuring a dose and a half, because the gilts get two doses, and then
the sows one dose every farrowing. And then I figured some labor in
there for that included with the cost of the vaccine. Divided by 9 ½
pigs weaned, so that comes out with about 9 cents, 9 ½ cents a pig. CTC
Denaguard®'s running me \$28.59 a ton. Mecadox®, in would be \$20 a ton.
So my net cost is \$859. I'd be running Mecadox if I wasn't running the
CTC Denaguard®.

Linco was running me 40, a little over 40 bucks a ton, less than
Mecadox®, at 20, so my net difference is \$20 a ton for the Linco. So
that's costing me about 20 cents a pig. So the net total cost for the
whole program's 33 cents a pig, which is real economical for a control
program as long as it works.

Now, the key to it is I can feed these at the lower weights, and of
course the high cost of the program is over here in the Phase 1 feed. If
I was delaying this until late-nursery, that gets a lot more expensive
because they're going to be eating a lot more of this high-priced feed.

So the strategy is to get it as early in the nursery as you can and get
by with it. Now, there may be reasons you have to wait later, depending
on each farm situation. So as long as I can keep it this early and make
it work, this is the time to do it. Move on to the next slide.

OK, the cost is lower (inaudible) the medication; we talked about that.
We're not using piglet vaccine, and we're avoiding the extra handling of
having to vaccinate the pigs. Let's go on to the next slide.

Why don't we vaccinate pigs? The biggest reason is we haven't needed to.
The second one is labor considerations and timing. The third one is
broken needles and abscesses; that doesn't have to be a big factor, but
it still is a factor. And of course, the fourth one is cost.

In my paper I talk some about labor and timing. I don't think we want to
minimize that one too much. I've been on the wrong end of the syringe
too many times and it's just darn hard work. And I know we could talk
about having immigrant crews do it and so on and so forth, but we just
can't minimize too much -- a pig at 6 to 10 weeks is a darn hard pig to
handle. They're a little too big to pick up easily, and they're very --
they're darn fast (laughter). Yet, I haven't figured out a good way to
do it yet. If you get 'em in small groups helps, but they tend to pile
up on each other about four deep, and in the hot weather they can get
very hot. If they're too tight, they pile. If they're too loose you
can't catch 'em. It's just a darn tough situation.

And I know in research you can swab the area and make it work very good,
but boy, out in the field what they're swabbed with is fecal material
most of the time. And -- especially two of those vaccinations, it's a
real problematic area. So you can't just minimize that there's a problem
with vaccination from a standpoint of labor and handling and pig
welfare, and more than that, people welfare.

So as long as I can stay away from it, I'm gonna, and maybe it's because
I'm lazy or whatever, but it's -- we just can't minimize what we're
doing. It's real easy for a veterinarian to sit in an air-conditioned
office and make that recommendation. But when you're thinking about the
people out on the farm doing the work, it's another consideration
altogether. Go on to the next slide, please.

As far as where vaccines should be used, older weaning ages, I think,
where you're getting more shedding of the organism into the pigs,
variable passive immunity. There again, they talked about this
yesterday. Younger sow herd, where they're maybe more shedding of the
organism into the pigs.

If you have severe secondary co-infections like PRRSV and influenza --
we're fortunate; in our herd, we've got the PRRSV under control. And I
hate like heck to stand up here and say that, because I'll probably go
home and have a blow-up. Like I told Bill or somebody yesterday, I hate
to have the press here, saying anything, because it's a sure way to have
a blow-up. 'Cause I've been in the business long enough to know that
everything ebbs and flows, and right now our PRRSV is in the ebb phase.
And I've never had PRRSV ebb permanently yet.

This whole community nursery, co-mingled weanlings thing, is an area
where I think you just about going to have to vaccinate the offspring. I
don't know how much of that's still going on; there's quite a bit of it,
I think, and that's a real problem. Next slide.

Areas where finishing barns are really concentrated; in Iowa, we've got
a lot of that, where there's just a huge concentration of finishing
pigs. And I don't know where you get around that with an area spreader.
You're going to have a lot of mycoplasma in the air, and at certain
times of the year you're probably going to have huge infectious doses,
and you're going to have to probably vaccinate finishing pigs. And if
you have a history of PRDC, there's probably no way around vaccinating
if you're going to have to fight that. Next slide.

The feed grade antibiotics, it gets back to economics, and as far as I'm
concerned, if you're going to spend \$30 a ton at 5 pounds per day, it's
going to cost you 50 cents per pig per week. So even if you -- even at
three pulses over the life of a group of finishing pigs, if you've got a
\$10 profit in that group of pigs, that's going to be \$1.50 or 15
percent of your profit. And pulse medication's great, but every time you
pulse, it's off the bottom line. And you can do cost-benefit analysis to
show that it pays, and it does if you have sick pigs. But the idea is
not to have sick pigs, so if you can work out programs that avoid
pulsing, that's the way you have to go.

We've all talked about the regulatory future being uncertain, and
there's people in the room here that are probably more qualified than me
to talk about that. What I hope we can do is retain discretion to use
feed medication just for the humane responsibility toward the animals;
we've got to be able to treat the animals when they're sick.

We can't get so worried about antibiotic resistance and those type of
issues that we fail to take care of the animals, because there are going
to be times when things go wrong. And as veterinarians we've got to have
the ability to treat the animals and make sure that they don't suffer
unduly because of some concern about theoretical antibiotic resistance.
Next slide.

New treatments, and that's I guess what we're here talking about. It
kind of gets back to is there going to be a market for the
pharmaceutical companies to come out with new treatments. If eradication
makes progress, is there going to be any market for new products? First
of all, I'm not sure eradication schemes are going to make progress, but
if they do then it's kind of a chicken and egg thing: if schemes were to
make progress, there probably won't be any market for people to develop
new products. If the feed-grade antibiotic thing gets so scary that no
one's wiling to develop a product, that's a question mark.

I talked to this a little bit already. If we continue to divest of
animal health products and -- or not products, but entities, who's going
to develop the products? And if vaccines should happen to improve, is
anybody going to want to develop FDA-type products or treatment
products?

And I guess this is another big question; it's a little bit what I was
referring to when we talked about inflexibility in the agencies. Where's
the line between diagnostics, vaccines, and treatments going to come
down in the future? We've got the USDA that handles, as I understand it,
vaccines and diagnostics. FDA handles so-called drugs. EPA's into oral
aerosol products and transgenics and some of those issues. Where are
some of these new products going to fit the line?

If we get products that are transgenic that is fed to the pigs, or a
product that we spray in the air that may be effective -- how are we
going to get clearance and approval from all these different agencies to
ever get these things into the pigs? And it may be the best product in
the world, but I can't imagine the regulatory morass we're going to have
trying to get these things approved and into the pig.

And what can we do to streamline approval so that these -- and that
doesn't include getting it past PETA and groups like that. So we need to
be thinking about some of these issues now, I think, so that as the
scientific community gets us some products that really may be helpful,
we can get the way cleared to get them into the pigs and keep us
competitive. Next slide.

As far as treatment concepts, I wanted to look at this a little bit.
Ideally we could eradicate the organism from the sow herds so that we
didn't have to deal with it at all. I don't know how practical that is.
Next best product would be something that would prevent or treat the
infection in the piglets, and not necessarily while they're on the sow
but right when we take them off the sow. Next best would be to eradicate
it from the juvenile pig, and then failing that, some sort of a sital or
removal product to take it away from the pig, preferably in the feeder
water. Just concept-type ideas, what would be the best way to treat the
organism, strictly a big-picture concept-type ideas. Next slide.

Faster, better, cheaper -- this is kind of my summary slide. Living with
*M. hyo* as an infection is just not economically sustainable; I think
we all agree with that, that we can't live with the organism in its
infectious state. I think we can live with it at a sub-clinical, or very
sub-clinical level, where it's not causing economic losses. And I think
"how do we treat it?" is the wrong question in the long term. I think
it's "how do we prevent" or how do we keep it so sub-clinical that it
doesn't bother us.

And I think treatment needs to be viewed as an assistance approach
toward elimination of the economic losses, if not eradication. And I
think the flip side of that is the more successful we are in eradication
or keeping it limited to a level that it is non-economic, that may lead
to fewer treatment options due to pharmaceutical economics. The more we
keep it down, the less you guys in the drug industry are going to be
interested in making products that are used for treatment. So that's
kind of the flip side of it.

I think that's the last slide, isn't it? Oh, yeah. Thank you (laughs).

(Applause.)

(End of Side A)

DR. BRAD THACKER: *(tape starts mid-sentence)* -- a program like you're
doing. I mean, you showed me the economics, the cost of the program. Can
you somehow also calculate the benefit of that program to your
operation? In other words, what would happen if you were not using --

DR. KORSLUND: Y'know, there's no good way to do that because it's not
research based; it's just observation, basically. The only way I could
do that is if I split groups and did replications and all that. And
that's the trouble with on-farm research: you really can't do that. All
I could do is pull one part of the program and then see what happens,
and that's not research either.

So I depend more on looking at research from other institutions or --
I'm just not much of a believer of on-farm research, I guess, for that
reason, because I can't control variables -- time being the biggest one.
If PRRSV blows up, I mean, there's too many variables that it just
doesn't make sense to do that. So I depend more on reading the
literature and talking to guys like you than trying to evaluate it
otherwise. Teddi?

DR. TEDDI WOLF: John, but you must've implemented those therapies
because of some economic concerns that you had, as far as what they were
impacting, right?

DR. KORSLUND: Yeah. Well --

DR. TEDDI WOLF: Did you get improvements \-- ?

DR. KORSLUND: Yeah, basically I've had a lot of trouble with PRRSV over
the years, and PRDCs in the past. And so I've -- the -- basically,
you've got to add antibiotics to the nursery feed anyway. And I knew
that mycoplasma was a problem, so I implemented them over time early on,
I guess. I've been on this program probably for three years, and ever
since I've been on that program the PRDC hasn't been much of a problem.
So I just haven't changed, is what it amounts to. So. Does that answer
your question? OK.

DR. CINDY BURNSTEEL: I just have a point of clarification. On one of
your last slides you said that EPA does transgenics, and really that's
probably under the realm of FDA.

DR. KORSLUND: OK.

DR. CINDY BURNSTEEL: Well, then there's still some discussion about
that. And also some oral products and aerosols are also under FDA; they
offer the \--

DR. KORSLUND: OK.

QUESTION: \-- of animals.

DR. BRAD THACKER: EPA is mainly insecticides.

DR. CINDY BURNSTEE: Pesticides.

DR. KORSLUND: OK.

DR. GILLIAN COMNY: OK. All right, one more.

DR. KORSLUND: One more?

DR. CARLOS PIJOAN: I was just wondering why you spend money on influenza
(inaudible).

DR. KORSLUND: (laughs) Probably a good question. Not getting what?

QUESTION ( off mic; inaudible)

DR. KORSLUND: Probably not. It was -- the main reason I did it, Carlos,
I guess, was I knew that group had been coughing; I wanted to see why
there were -- if there was influenza involved in that one group. But I
would say that's one I may drop, if I was to redo it, next time around.

DR. BRAD THACKER: I've got a follow-up to that, is I agree with that --
(inaudible). One of the things we don't do enough is collect samples and
save them, put them in the freezer (inaudible).

# DR. BILL HOLLIS

DR. COMYN: All right, thank you very much, Dr. Korslund. (Applause.) OK,
our next speaker, Bill Hollis, is trying to get the microphone on there.
And -- is it not working? Oh, OK, all right. OK, Dr. Hollis, our next
speaker, will be talking from a practitioner's viewpoint. He will be
talking about mycoplasma pneumonia, what's needed in treatment for this
disease and other considerations.

He is a graduate of the University of Illinois College of Veterinary
Medicine, 1996. He has since been in swine practice in Carthage,
Illinois. His practice consists of about 30 percent of what he called
straight production work in which they actually manage farms for
producers, as well as 70 percent consultation and other services. And
with that, I'd like to welcome Dr. Hollis.

DR. HOLLIS: Thank you. That's fine. I -- this is going to be an
interesting talk if the computer doesn't work (laughter), so I'll start
giving you some background, and then hopefully we'll be able to put it
all together.

First off, I put together the abstract on the fly, so the abstract that
you have in the book is my own perspective, and so this is somewhat of a
disclaimer, if you will. I am speaking from my own point of view. Our
practice is a four-veterinarian swine practice.

And I'm by no means speaking for my other three partners, because what
we found out -- when I first came to Carthage there were two of us, and
within that next year we added three, and the three of us became
partners the next year. And now we've added a fourth. And what I've
found out is that when you get all four of us in the same room, our
staff meetings just keep getting longer and longer, and we never come to
specific agreements (laughter) on how things are going to be done. So
this is, again, just my perspective. It's not by any means the end-all
and the answer. So.

The second disclaimer that I'll make is that our practice does also sell
pharmaceuticals, or dispense. And I've been told, after one
presentation, that, "You really should stand up and give all of your
biases first, so people know where you're coming from." I don't think
that that's by any means going to influence our decision-making, but I
just thought I'd throw that out. If any of you felt the need to throw it
back at me (laughter) afterward. Just keep -- go ahead.

The four veterinarians in our practice, again, Dr. Connor, Dr. Lowe, Dr.
Propst, and myself -- next slide -- and I thought I would share a little
bit about how we see mycoplasma. Most of that was covered yesterday, so
the first third of my presentation I'll try and click through fairly
quickly for you.

A few things that I felt like weren't covered that I'll try to spend a
little bit of time on is how our producers look at it from an economic
perspective, and how we try to help them base their decisions from a
therapeutic perspective. And so there's some times that those two things
are actually competing with one another.

The disease that we see, as far as mycoplasma, is never specifically
considered mycoplasma, I don't think. It's similar to what Dr. Korslund
just said in his production system: the barn manager calls, says, "A
cough's getting started; I gotta do something." And so what we see are
chronic, non-productive cough -- primarily it's in, it's also -- the
recognition is that there's a backup on feed; there's a decreased either
feed intake or decreased growth rate in the pigs. And I think our good
barn managers can recognize that, or the good people that have good
records can recognize that.

Low mortality, obviously, has already been discussed. High morbidity
throughout the group. And then the cost factor that I'll get into, share
with you, is that there's this increase of either pre-markets or culls
and lights, and that's actually a much greater impact from an economic
standpoint than the individual pigs that get severely infected.

I'm by no means a pathologist, and I did listen to Dr. Schwartz
yesterday give you all kinds of great descriptions, and so I'm not
trying to give you much more of the same. But I would say that there's,
on very rare occasions, we believe we have seen naïve pigs to mycoplasma
become infected. Probably there's a mixed infection, I'll give you that,
with *Pasteurella*. But they become very acutely diseased. And so there
is an acute form to this, but it's very rare. And I put in there that
it's simple to handle, because in most of those cases you already have
either a stable or negative pig flow, and so it's one barn or one site
or one location and it's much easier to solve.

The challenge is the chronic disease -- and go ahead and switch slides.
I blew that up. And I believe this is the most common presentation. We
see mycoplasma in continuous flow barns, and we see mycoplasma in
all-in-all out barns that are coming at the same, essentially at the
same time, time and again. So it's managing that disease presentation or
predicting where you think that disease is going to present, and then
finding ways to manage that disease.

I added what I believe are five very important intervention measures.
It's not just a therapeutic intervention; it's pig flow, it is
ventilation, facility management, air quality. The reason that air
quality's in there is that it's real interesting to go into barns in the
wintertime, especially if LP gets more and more expensive, and these
guys will allow pig weight to heat the barn. And when they do that, the
fans aren't turning, and so there's really not enough air exchange. And
so then it's having to recognize that, yeah, they've got the right
temperature and the recorder on the wall says that it's the right
temperature, but there's not air exchange. And so that's what I meant by
air quality.

Vaccination, I think, was discussed very well by Dr. Korslund. And we
fight with the same issues. We do believe we can get good protection
from vaccine, and we believe that vaccine is effective -- I shouldn't
say "we"; my partners'll kill me when you tell them I said that
(laughter). I see good protection from that. And I do believe that the
vaccine can be an effective part of the prevention or treatment
strategy, but that's not our drive today.

Strategic therapeutics, of course, is what I still think is absolutely
necessary, and I put "strategic" in front of it for the economics that
Dr. Korslund was talking about. And unfortunately, many of our clients
in our practice base have not evolved to the degree of segregation in
production that Dr. Korslund was talking about. I would say easily 80
percent of the larger progressive producers have that separation, where
pigs are nowhere close to sows. But we still have another 20 percent or
so that are single-site, farrow to finish, and a lot of those are big
enough -- 600, 700 sows, plus all those pigs, 7,000, 8,000 pigs on site,
and so you have all those mixed ages. And that's where strategic
therapeutics is critical, because you can't get all the feed medication
into them before they're 35 pounds and then have it solved. Next slide.

So how do we know it's mycoplasma? This is getting back to some of what
Dr. Thacker was talking about. And I put that list in order because
that's kind of how it happens with us. When I go to a farm, how do I
know it's mycoplasma? Well, I get a phone call because there's a deep
cough, not very productive, not a lot of death loss. But the pigs just
don't look very good and they're not eating very well. So we'll cut open
anywhere between three and five pigs -- you can't make a diagnosis off
one pig. And the producer would love you to take this pig that he drug
out yesterday and it's out behind the back of the barn -- but you can't
use that pig. So we try to find three to five representative pigs in
that population, euthanize, necropsy, take samples -- all those great
lesions that Dr. Schwartz showed.

We do send in tissues for histology. Most of the time we'll have pigs
that are a pretty good size, and so they're not going to ship whole pigs
to Iowa State that are 200 pounds (laughter). And so we'll send off 8 to
10 pounds worth of lungs and try and get our histology and further
testing done on tissues. And then we'll pull serum. And if I go to the
Dr. Korslund farm, where he says, "By God I'm not going to spend \$350
on serum!" we'll do 10, but if we can we'll get 30, depending on the
impact of what we're trying to measure. But I'd say 10 is a good
representative sample in most cases.

After that first visit is the more important discussion. The
identification of the disease is fairly cut and dried; it's trying to
discuss with that producer, "OK, now what do we do after we know we
found the organism, or we think we found the organism?" And that's where
it's pig flow, pig flow, pig flow. It's how you can predict the behavior
of the organism in the next set of pigs. And we do that with serology.

I put slaughter checks up there, although we're doing less and less
slaughter checks all the time. In fact, the only groups that we'll do
slaughter checks for now are genetic companies that are verifying that
there is no severe pneumonia or no atraric rhinitis at the end stage,
because really it's just a snapshot of how those pigs looked at 6½, 7
months of age. But we still do some slaughter checks, primarily in the
verification or documentation for the genetics companies that we work
with. Next slide.

When I say "pig flow," these are the questions that I ask when I talk to
producers that I believe are critical to understanding or predicting
what's going to happen with that disease. Do you have segregation? And
that's obvious when you drive up on the farm. But you have to answer
that question. Can you get segregation of age in pigs? And if you can,
when are you getting them segregated?

All these guys have buildings that they're going to use for 30, 40, 50
years -- some of them shouldn't -- but they've got buildings that
they're going to keep using, and so do they have to move pigs two or
three times? Many of our producers have tried to get to where they don't
have to move pigs that much. Obviously it's labor-intensive, it's harder
on the pigs. And so if they're not moving pigs as frequently, then at
what ages are pigs in this location, at this square footage? And then
for what length of time are they in this location for this square
footage?

And if you know anything about Carthage Veterinary Service, we're big
promotants of wean-to-finish, also. So is there a possibility for those
pigs to be moved off-site as 17-, 18-day-old, 10-pound pigs, and left in
that same square footage for the whole life cycle?

Are there multiple ages and then multiple -- multiple ages in that same
building, and then multiple ages on that same site? And the differences
there are multiple-room buildings, where they put -- yeah, people will
tell us, "I've got all-in-all out," and then you find out it's
all-in-all out by room. And it's, we call them a hotel-style finisher;
they just have all these groups lined up right next to each other. And
so there is going to be more activity, if you will, in those type of
locations.

And then, what strategies do they have currently? Do they have
treatments currently in place? And I'll pull all that information
together to try and do some level of prediction of what's going to
happen in the next group. Next slide.

I thought I'd show you a picture of -- I've got one, thanks -- of one of
the sow farms that we manage and how we try to keep them, in appearance,
just to give you some idea of segregation as well. This is a gestation
barn, farrowing barn, and then isolation for incoming gilts. But on this
site, on this location, there's -- there are no animals under the age of
7 months of age, with the exception of the newborn baby pigs. So this is
how we have tried to develop enough segregation in these facilities to
where we know we're not eliminating mycoplasma, but we're reducing the
risk of exposure. Next slide.

And then this is a nursery on the same site. It's 1,000 feet down the
gravel road, which I heard somebody explain at our swine veterinarian
meeting, it has to be an inconvenient distance for walking. And I
thought that was a really good way to explain it (laughter). So it is --
it's not -- we're in a fairly pig-dense area, much like John's area, and
so it's not simple to get completely hidden and prevent two, three,
four-mile separation. Three are locations where you can do that, but
west-central Illinois is not one of those.

And so if we can find a piece of ground for this producer that he can
put his nursery on that's 1,000 feet away, at least it's an inconvenient
distance for him to walk back and forth. And so there is some
separation. Next slide.

This is a profile that I tried to patch on, and I'll try to explain how
we do this. Strategic therapeutics was the last of those list of things
that we're going to change, and so I'm going to go from there forward.
And please stop me, too, I'm happy to take your questions; I don't want
to put you all to sleep.

What we're doing here is taking serum samples at 6 weeks of age, 10
weeks of age, 14 weeks of age, 18, 22, 26 -- sorry, I patched that over
the CVS pig. But -- and then those 10 serum samples are submitted for
swine influenza, H.I. test for H1 swine influenza, PRRSV, ELISA, and
mycoplasma ELISA. And this is just prevalence, or the number, percentage
rather, percentage out of those 10 samples at each of those age groups
that are positive.

This is non-scientific, but it is effective. It's not statistically
controlled, but it's much like John's snapshots: it gives you a good
idea of what's happening. And when we do this, we are essentially trying
to predict what this 10-week-old pig is going to do when he's 14. These
are snapshots -- this is a one-time snapshot of all pigs on the site. So
it's not following -- it's ear tagging and following the exact same
group all the way through; this is done one time, quick snapshot, in an
effort to predict what's going to happen.

What we think is happening here, and I can give you some history on this
specific herd, is there's maternal antibodies going into these pigs at a
very early age. And so we have even it's a sow herd that's vaccinated
for swine influenza; it's a sow herd that's positive to PRRSV, and a sow
herd that's positive for myco, and vaccinated, pigs are vaccinated for
mycoplasma. So what I can tell you that we learned from this, and this
is a herd that everything continues to drop as maternals drop, there's a
vaccine. But then there's some -- this surprised us here -- there's some
drop in vaccine protection, and some increase in activity in those pigs.

And so what we've learned from Dr. Thacker is that when these pigs start
to sero-convert after they get moved out of the nursery into the
finisher sites, there's all kinds of PRRSV activity, and there's a
reduction in the effectiveness, we think. Maybe that's a stretch,
Eileen, sorry.

DR. EILEEN THACKER: I think what you're seeing there is that typically,
until you're following -- your 14 weeks is your vaccine antibody
response; 18 weeks, you haven't seen them much mycoplasma yet. The 22
weeks is due, is your anamnesic response to a secondary, to your
infection.

DR. HOLLIS: These pigs here don't cough, but these pigs here do get
therapeutics -- they get antibiotics.

DR. EILEEN THACKER: That's why I was explaining the mycoplasma antibody
response. That's excellent response; that's what you would expect.
That's good response.

DR. HOLLIS: OK.

DR. EILEEN THACKER And it's also suggesting that your challenge is
occurring --

DR. HOLLIS: Somewhere --

DR. EILEEN THACKER: \-- around there.

DR. HOLLIS: There.

DR. EILEEN THACKER: Because the 22 weeks shows that your vaccine
antibody levels going back up. That's what we expect. The ones that we
would get more concerned about are the vaccinated ones that don't go
back up.

DR. BRAD THACKER: That just means they're not exposed).

DR. EILEEN THACKER: No, but if they're exposed.

DR. BRAD THACKER: Yeah, but --

DR. EILEEN THACKER: Right.

DR. BRAD THACKER: You get groups -- we followed this with, some groups
will get exposed and they'll pop up like that. Some will stay
(inaudible).

DR. EILEEN THACKER: No, but I meant that if they were --

DR. HOLLIS: The mycoplasma will stay negative the rest of the way out.

DR. EILEEN THACKER: That's fine if they don't get exposed much.

DR. BRAD THACKER: Through the vaccine experimentally, they lose their
titers.

DR. EILEEN THACKER: Very quickly, within a month.

DR. BRAD THACKER: Six or eight weeks after the second vaccination.

DR. HOLLIS: See, these guys do the same thing that we do in Carthage,
don't you? (laughter) We use this essentially just to help us evaluate
how effective we are.

DR. TEDDI WOLF: When is it that they're getting vaccinated?

DR. HOLLIS: These pigs are --

QUESTION: (inaudible) getting vaccinated? (laughter)

DR. HOLLIS: Yeah, right, exactly. (laughter) We think that these pigs
are getting vaccinated two shots in the nursery.

DR. TEDDI WOLF: In the nursery.

DR. HOLLIS: Yeah, two shots. One at, as they're moved into the nursery
and one at mid-nursery.

QUESTION: OK.

DR. HOLLIS: Yeah.

DR. BRAD THACKER: Which vaccine are you using?

DR. HOLLIS: This was, this is about -- not quite two-year-old data here,
and this would be Respers -- I'm sorry, the Respershire, not the
Respershire 1, the two doses of Respershire.

DR. EILEEN THACKER: What are your therapeutics?

DR. HOLLIS: Um, this group, this specific farm was using a -- well,
there's therapeutics in the nursery, there would be Denigard® CTC early
in the nursery for about a week and a half, and then Mecadox® for the
rest of the nursery period, and then a pulse of Lincomycin out in here,
but I'll explain that when I get to the drugs. It was not at 200 pounds
per ton, and I'll explain that when I get there. So, next slide.

Um, I think I've already pretty much talked about that, the way that we
identify at second to the serum. Next slide.

Why are economics important? I'm sorry, I cut some slides out, so that's
why it chopped so quick; I didn't want to spend all my time talking
about the disease after it was covered so well yesterday. We are strong
advocates of food production and the food production industry,
obviously, in Carthage. And we are trying to help our producers remain
competitive, because it's a highly competitive business with narrow
profit margins. And these producers, many of our producers that are,
say, 600 sows, farrow to finish, are perceived by their industry as
being small producers today. But it's a huge capital investment for
those producers. And so they're going to stay in the business because
they have a huge capital investment, or somebody's going to keep feeding
those pigs. And they want to be the one feeding those pigs.

The other interesting thing about economics is when I was -- my wife is
also a veterinarian, small animal veterinarian. And when I was in
veterinary school, the pig guys received a lot of flack -- sorry, pig
guys and girls (laughter) -- received a lot of flack because they were
not thinking individual animal-based. And I really think that economics
has driven us back to thinking individual animal-based.

I mean, we're going to put everything down on a cost-per-pig, and we're
going to make decisions of "is it necessary for this whole, huge
population, and are we going to throw large volumes of therapeutics at
these pigs," and no, we're not going to do that. And so we're going to
make individual decisions; we're going to make population decisions and
predictions, but it's still -- and I think the economics is driving
that, I guess. More of my own opinion. Next slide.

Here's another, just to put some numbers to efficiencies, to the loss of
efficiency. And that's somewhat of a stretch, too, to say mycoplasma is
not necessarily something that I want you to look at as disease impact
with all these pathologic problems on all these slides. I want you to
look at it from the farmer's perspective that I'm talking to, because he
doesn't care what histology means, or even how to pronounce it. What he
wants to know is, "What is this disease going to cost me?" and then
"What's it going to cost to prevent it?"

Here's the -- and, again, this is more of a swag, I guess, too. It's
just numbers that I put together. If your feed cost is -- and this is
actually 0.065, and this is 0.055. This is \$110 a ton average feed
cost, \$130 a ton average feed cost. If it's a fixed growth rate, and
it's not a fixed growth rate, obviously, among all groups, but if it's
-- that's what I had to put it on to say just feed only. If there's just
specifically a feed-only cost to this loss of efficiency, and you fix
that 250 pounds of growth, you're going to put 250 pounds into a pig.
And you've 0.55-pound feed. Then if your feed efficiency target -- this
is wean to finish -- 10 pounds to 260 pound feed efficiency, pounds of
feed per pound of pork -- per pound of gain, rather, not pound of meat
pork, but per pound of gain.

And this, somewhere down in here would be a great target for efficiency
in those pigs. This is the pounds of feed that it's going to take for
every 1/10 change in feed efficiency -- which is pretty small -- it's
somewhere around \$1.50 per pig. And feed efficiency can go up a tenth
when there's equipment failure, so it's important to manage these things
and to monitor, and to know what the impact of a disease is. And it's
easily \$1.50 and probably twice that when mycoplasma hits hard, but
maybe not. Next slide.

For those of you that like graphs (laughter), this is another way to
look at it. This is, again, the feed cost behind, and just showing that
same level of cost. And this was total cost -- can you back it up? Is it
possible to back it up? That's just these numbers here, going from
somewhere around \$34, \$35 of feed cost to 38, 39. And if you've got
\$2.50, 10-year average corn cost, then you're looking at 42 to 47. OK,
and you can click on past that.

So it's not just a feed-only cost. And when we make therapeutic
decisions, we're assuming that the pig is still going to eat, which we
think that they are. But we're also assuming in that model that I just
showed you that the growth rate is going to be maintained. And we know
that it's not only a feed efficiency; it's a growth-rate cost. So your
decision of "do I go ahead and throw in the Denigard® CTC?" or "do I go
ahead and throw in the Lincomix®?" or do I go ahead and pull the trigger
and put something in this barn, in the feed in this barn, also includes
that pre-market cost or the losses from pigs that aren't going to fit
into the market window. So that's why we'll make that decision. Next
slide.

And that's where we use an opportunity-loss equation. This equation is
actually designed so that a producer can try and target the best weight
to sell his pigs for the packer that he's selling to. So the equation
behind this is different for every packer; this weight is not specific
to every packer essentially is what I'm saying. At this specific packer,
this weight right here is -- this one, sorry -- 281 to 290, and that's
based on the percentage of yield and percentage of lean, and how the
premium is calculated.

Essentially what this is saying is pigs that don't fit into this weight
range exactly lose opportunity. When my producers get a printout from
their packing plant, it has a sort loss, but that's not what this is. It
has a sort loss that's just specifically saying how many were pulled off
or railed off, and how many minor sort-docking did they receive, or was
taken out of their check. This is something that they don't see that we
try to share with them, so that they can actually get more uniformity
into those pigs.

The reason being is that if they have an 18-week wall, if they have a
stall-out, and they start to have greater and greater and greater
variation among that group of pigs, then somewhere down in here you're
going to have 10, 15, 20 percent of that population -- and it may
continue to grow. And so there are large costs per pig to fitting into
that part of the equation. Did I explain this well enough? OK. Stop me
if I'm rambling. Next slide.

So what do we do? And that's, in following along with this, is if we're
all going to the farm and we're all on John's farm and he's not a
veterinarian, and he's asking the questions. That's kind of how I tried
to make this progression of this talk. What do we do about it?

Well, in our discussion, we'll say there is an elimination possibility,
but probably not a very good one if you're in a pig-dense area. And if
you -- and I put "trusted, monitored source," not because you can't
trust them but you need to understand your source. And I do believe we
have trusted, monitored sources by mycoplasma-free pigs; I believe
that's there. But I think there are also sources which may not be
monitored, and you need to know and understand your source if you're
actually going to go into an elimination or consider elimination. And
obviously your density and what the likelihood is that you'll be able to
maintain it.

I've already talked about vaccination, and treatment and control is what
I'm going to spend my time on from here on out. So -- I'm not running
over time, am I? OK, next slide please.

So treatment and control. Obviously to reduce individual animal
suffering, but it's just as much in that discussion is the prevention of
future disease. So it's a population-based decision as well. Next slide.

The reason I put percentage in our herds is that's a guesstimate of what
we believe is in herds, in those populations of pigs that we work with,
that I believe -- sorry -- are in herds and populations of pigs that we
work with. And if you work from the bottom up, only about 15 percent of
the herds in our practice base have APP, and that's because many of them
have eliminated it and don't have APP. So if we're using tilmycocin for
APP, it's not a therapeutic decision, although there's a *Pasteurella*
possibility, I guess.

I'm just talking specifically as label. If we're going to feed
antibiotics based off the label, Lincomix® is an option because about 98
percent of our herds have mycoplasma. And it's probably bigger than 98;
I was just trying to think of the genetic companies we've worked with
that would actually have mycoplasma-free pigs. And I should say here
it's also labeled for swine dysentery and now for ileitis. And so that
allows us, based on what other organisms are in that population, to make
that decision: can we use 100 grams per ton and get some level of
protection from mycoplasma activity at that rate?

And so that, I would say, allows us a little bit more flexibility in the
use of lincomycin. *Pasteurella*'s in 100 percent of them, and so
*Pasteurella*'s on the label of all these, I believe, I think. If I'm
wrong, I'm sorry.

And so these are definitely options, and they've been options long-term.
And our clients actually have a great deal of confidence and have used
these products for many years. So. Next slide.

So then, "what's it going to cost me?" is his next question. "How am I
going to manage it?" is the first one, and then, "If I'm going to manage
it in this way, what's it going to cost me?" Well, then, in our practice
we also always answer a question with another question (laughter), so
(inaudible) pigs and how long do we need to treat them?\
So I would say that it's common to find pigs that are going to get
treated somewhere around this age, and then possibly somewhere around
this size, or age. But you've got to ask the guy questions and make that
decision based off your serum sampling and your history in that herd.

How long are we going to treat? Well, most of the time it's going to be
in the feed for 14 days, although -- and I should not have just put
tilmicosin; it's, the next slide that I show you will show that it's
also labeled on Lincomix® for 21 days. So tilmicosin and Lincomix® both
have 21-day labels. Next slide.

So here they are. And there's a lot of stuff on this slide. I apologize
if you can't read the numbers very well, but I'm more than happy to
email this to anybody that wants it, and I've also agreed to email it to
Julie. I did not get it to the -- so it's not on your CD; I didn't get
it done in time to give to everybody. But I'm happy to email this to
you, and I also will -- my second disclaimer is that these are old
cost-per-ton numbers, probably six months old, that we've got in a feed
antibiotic spreadsheet that we just plop in. So I'm sure that, while I'm
sure that Joe Luter and Smithfield don't pay the same that my producers
pay in Carthage -- that's one thing -- and I'm also sure that there
could be some change or some move in these prices. And so it's a best
guess, I guess.

So this is how we help them. We say if you're going to feed 70-pound
pigs; they're going to eat on our spreadsheet somewhere around 2.35
pounds of feed per day, are you going to feed them for 21 days? That's
50 pounds, 14 days, that's 33 pounds of feed. This is that cost-per-ton
at those rates, at those levels. So we're looking at a cost per pig over
here, 50 cents, 20 cents, 23 cents, a buck and a quarter, a dollar. Am I
off on any of these? 'Cause I know there's people in here that would
know these a lot better than I do. So if I'm off, I don't intend to be.

And these 170-pound pigs are going to eat somewhere around 3 pounds a
day, 3.2, maybe more than that, in fact, we hope. But I was trying to be
-- I was trying to hit somewhere in the middle. If it's 3.2 pounds per
day for 21 days, 69 pounds of feed, the only difference in these costs
per ton is if we're using it at 10 milligrams per pound of CTC, then my
calculation was 595 grams per ton there and 800. This actually, based on
your jockeying for feed consumption, could go up -- even to as much as
900 and something grams per ton, if you're feeding it off of 10
milligrams per pound body weight.

And so those are the therapeutic costs to feed that big pig. So that's
why John doesn't want to feed large amounts of feed antibiotics in the
finisher, because nobody wants to throw an extra \$1.50 to \$2 on top of
their existing program. So in the back of my mind, I think these guys in
our production base are going to spend somewhere around \$2.70, maybe
\$3 a pig in total feed antibiotics all the way through.

And so they have in their minds some kind of a cost per pig for growth
promotants or for diarrhea prevention in the nursery, or any of these
number of things. And so if we're going to add this on top of that for
this mycoplasma strategy, then what is that total cost per pig going to
be.

Well, then he's also going to say, "OK, that's what it's going to cost
me. What do you think I should do?" And again, I'm trying to explain
there's no blanket protocol or policy. I did put in that abstract a
strategy that's fairly recent in our practice base that I've used and
been happy with, and that's 100 grams per ton at two pulse locations of
Lincomix®, 100 grams per ton of Lincomix® at two pulse locations, to get
that cost down. That's in a vaccinated herd as well, and we believe it's
working very well.

But there's no one therapeutic, and I'm not scientific enough in our
practice to measure side by side and do controlled studies to tell you
which one is the best one to use, either. But we try and make our
decisions, treat for what we can see, and then also measure the result
so that the next time we have to make the same decision, can we actually
measure the outcome and plan back. So you have to have production
records, feed budgets, and diagnostics as all part of that.

And then the overall strategy is obviously to reduce medication cost;
that's our strategy with these producers. Next slide.

Any questions? When you look at this slide, I want you to notice that
these are 10-pound pigs on slatted floors, too, so we're big promotants
of that. Yes?

QUESTION: Just a comment. The comment you made on dollars per pig
(inaudible) beef-grade medication. Could you give --

DR. GILLIAN COMYN: Could you repeat the question? 'Cause we're not able
to record if you don't speak it, so. All right, sorry about that.

QUESTION (miked): Bill, the comment you made about the cost that your
producers are willing to spend, do you have somewhat of a feel for what,
how that varies across the industry? In other words, there are
organizations that are willing to spend far less than that on medicated
feeds and use other options. Could you talk about that for just a
minute?

DR. HOLLIS: Sure, well, everybody likes their own dog best (laughter).
And our dog is to treat the diseases that we see and measure the result,
and we think that if they spend this \$2.50 to \$3, in that range, on
therapeutics, that we are getting a measured result and we can see those
results with that opportunity loss equation that I was explaining to
you.

I do know that there are competitors in our industry -- when I talk to a
veterinarian that's a friend of mine that works for a large integrated
company, for example, he explains that, "We don't use any of that." And
so I would guess that's driven that medication cost down to closer to
\$1 a pig, maybe even less than that if they're not using any growth
promotants due to their equation, comparing that to the price of corn.
And if they're not thinking that they're getting benefit out of that
growth promotant, they wipe it all out. And so there's, I'm sure there's
producers that spend next to nothing by comparison to what our producers
are using.

So it could be as low as -- well, you see a lot of those, what do you
think, Brad?

DR. ROY SCHULTZ: I would say I just did a cost comparison, a couple
large operations, where I use antibiotic-free pigs; we raise them
antibiotic free. Costs us somewhere between 19% to 20% more to raise
pigs that are completely antibiotic free.

DR. HOLLIS: And that's production cost?

DR. ROY SCHULTZR: That's production cost, yeah.

DR. GILLIAN COMYN: Any other question?

DR. ROY SCHULTZ: I would say we have to satisfy our consumers; if we
have consumers that are willing to pay that at this time, in a fairly
niche market. But again, and I'd say in the same breath that if we force
that on the entire industry, we'll decimate the industry because our
competitors, which are Brazil, Latin America, other countries like that,
are not, would not be regulated like that to do that.

DR. GILLIAN COMYN: Anybody else?

QUESTION: Let me make one comment.

SPEAKER: He's loud enough (laughter).

DR. BRAD THACKER: And I think that's the -- 10, 15 years ago I could
always use the benchmark of \$2 or less for everything. I mean, all
injectibles, vaccines. And I think we've seen some creep in that, but I
guess I would say on the other hand, the reason for the creep upward is
we have better products. And we didn't have mycoplasma vaccines 10 years
ago, we didn't have some of the -- probably on the antibiotic side,
understand as well how to use them, things like that. So the real key is
evaluating the benefit, and that's the hard part. That's where the
records come into play.

DR. HOLLIS: Thank you. (Applause.)

DR. GILLIAN COMYN: Are there any other questions for either Dr. Korslund
or Dr. Hollis? If there are not, we're going to go ahead and take a
break and we'll come back at just after 9 o'clock to listen to Dr.
Bradford about his point of view from the pharmaceutical industry. Thank
you.

(Crowd noises.)

(End of Tape1)