Annual PRRSV productivity losses to US pork producers for 2016 to 2020 were estimated at 1.2 billion dollars: 380.82 million in the breeding phase and 819.41 million in the growing phase. That is a substantial increase from the 663.91 million reported by Holtkamp and colleagues in 2013 on data from 2005 to 2010. The estimate uses the same enterprise budgeting methodology as its predecessor, drawing herd status distribution from the Morrison Swine Health Monitoring Project, productivity data from twelve swine companies, and prices and costs from USDA and InterPIG.
The obvious explanation for a larger number is a larger market, and the authors tested it. Market prices, production cost and national pig inventory together account for only about 108 million dollars of the 536 million dollar increase. The remaining 428 million is attributed to the share of herds affected by PRRSV and to the productivity gap between affected and unaffected herds. Adjusted for price changes and for growth in the breeding herd and pigs marketed since 2010, the figure is 1.092 billion dollars. The increase is therefore mostly real rather than nominal, and it sits in variables producers have some influence over.
The more useful detail for anyone deciding where to spend is where the loss now falls. Growing herds accounted for 55 percent of lost production in the earlier study and account for 68 percent here. Breeding herd losses rose roughly 26 percent while growing herd losses rose roughly 127 percent. Both studies cover breeding and growing herds, so this is a genuine redistribution rather than a difference in what was counted. The consequence is that the cost of a sow farm break is increasingly incurred downstream of the sow farm, which means the value of holding a breeding site negative propagates through the flow rather than staying on the site that carries the capital.