“Great innovation only happens when people aren’t afraid to do things differently,” George Carter said.
It has been nearly 20 years since the first commercial sow farms were filtered with the goal of controlling porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) virus. This was certainly different at the time. Farmers and veterinarians didn’t know if it would work. What they did know was that the survival of many family farms depended on changing the strategy in preventing PRRS.
For generations, the sow farm was a foundational piece to their family farm – a truth that still stands today. Ownership of sows was a way of securing a pig supply, controlling health and genetics, and building equity for the farm. PRRS was threatening that paradigm, as it was frequently infecting sow farms and eliminating the ability to consistently control health. For many farms, high infection rates were becoming unsustainable.
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