Urgency is Key to Fighting Japanese Encephalitis Virus

History shows we don't always learn from others like we should. Take porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED), for example. When this terrible virus began circulating around China, Paul Sundberg, DVM, specifically remembers sitting around with other veterinarians saying, "It's a good thing we don't have it here."

Then, he says, everyone went on with life until PED was discovered in the U.S. not long after and the U.S. pork industry had to scramble to find out how to respond and control it.

But it happens. It's easy to miss the urgency of a situation until it's too late. That's why some of the top veterinarians in the U.S. pork industry recently gathered at the University of Georgia Center for the Ecology of Infectious Diseases in Athens, Ga., to discuss Japanese Encephalitis Virus (JEV).

"It's to our peril if we don't learn from what Australia has gone through, just like it was to our peril when we ignored PED circulating around China," says Sundberg, executive director of the Swine Health Information Center (SHIC).