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Page 6 %u2013 Australian Pork Newspaper, February 2025 www.porknews.com.au*To reduce lung lesions Fostera Gold PCV MH contains inactivated recombinant chimeric porcine circovirus type 1 containing the porcine circovirus type 2a open reading frame 2 (ORF2) protein, inactivated recombinant chimeric porcine circovirus type 1 containing the porcine circovirus type 2b (ORF2) protein and inactivated Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae strain.Zoetis Australia Pty Ltd. ABN 94 156 476 425. Level 6, 5 Rider Boulevard, Rhodes NSW 2138. %u00a9 2024 Zoetis Inc. All rights reserved. ZL1958B...SO SHOULDY O U R PROTECTIONTHE ONLYvaccines withTWO PCV2GENOTYPESprotecting againstPCV2a, PCV2b& PCV2d*UNIQUE FORMULATION SINGLE OR SPLIT DOSET H R E A T S ADAPT...T H R E A T S ADAPT...The conference offers insights into successful feral pig management. Photo: Local Land Services MurrayDON%u2019T miss out.The National Feral Pig Conference 2025 %u2013 being held on March 24-26, 2025 at the Mantra on View Surfers Paradise %u2013 is quickly approaching. Conference delegates will be welcomed to Queensland by Minister for Primary Industries Tony Perrett.This year%u2019s conference will focus on providing delegates with practical information to enable feral pig management to be more effective, and how this can be achieved. An exciting line-up of invited speakers has been assembled, supported by 29 submitted abstracts addressing the conference theme %u2018Getting the fundamentals right%u2019. After an overwhelming response to the call for abstracts, the conference opening, Welcome to Country and plenary keynote session will now be held on Monday March 24, immediately prior to the welcome function.We are thrilled that Professor Jim Hone from the University of Canberra accepted our invitation to be the conference%u2019s keynote speaker. Jim will address the topic %u2018Managing feral pig damage for production and biodiversity%u2019 and discuss how the relationship between management effort and outcomes can be demonstrated.Two sessions will be devoted to addressing benefits to land managers from effective feral pig coordination and collaboration. Various state and regional coordinators from across Australia will present details of their programs, the importance of relationships and how these coordinated programs are reducing feral pig impacts. Our invited speakers are Local Land Services NSW feral pig coordinator Bec Grey, NAILSMA Queensland senior project coordinator Dr Angie Reid and Western Australia%u2019s Central Wheatbelt Biosecurity Association executive officer Linda Vernon. They will be joined by Darling Downs South West Queensland feral pig program coordinator John Scriven %u2013 one of the five Queensland regional coordinators funded through Queensland Feral Pest Initiative Round 8a %u2013 on a discussion panel to provide delegates with further insights on the value, challenges and opportunities to land managers when feral pig management programs are conducted on a landscape-scale cross tenure basis. The importance of establishing trust and engaging the community to enable feral pig management to be more effective to reduce their impacts will be covered by Local Land Services Murray regional pest coordinator John Nolan. His presentation is one of two by invited speakers discussing the session theme %u2018Harnessing people power%u2019. A discussion panel will be held to gain land manager perspectives on how to engage land managers to work together in coordinated ways, understand some of the key drivers that bring them together and how to maintain their involvement.During feral pig management activities, carcass disposal may pose considerable logistical and biosecurity challenges. Ausvet executive consultant Dr Brendan Cowled and Department of Primary Industries Biosecurity Queensland senior principal veterinarian Rebecca Ambrose will discuss this topic in relation to environmentally persistent viruses, such as African swine fever virus and foot-and-mouth disease virus.Outcomes from their work investigating whether natural decomposition above ground under Australian conditions through the %u2018destroy and let lie%u2019 method can achieve ASFV and FMDV inactivation thresholds will be presented.Centre of Excellence for Biosecurity Risk Analysis Associate Professor Richard Bradhurst will present results from a recently completed Australian Pork Limited funded project conducted by Madeline Oberin, as part of her PhD, to understand disease transmission risks between feral and domestic pigs using camera traps, develop a methodology to allow pork producers to assess the likelihood of feral pig encounters at commercial piggeries and optimise camera trap surveillance design for industry use. These results provided the first largescale data-driven insights into potential interactions between feral and domestic pigs in Australia. Key outcomes from this project %u2013 including how these may support APIQ Voluntary Enhanced Biosecurity Standards ASF in relation to feral pig exposure assessment %u2013 will be presented in a future article in this publication. Richard will also discuss recent work being undertaken to extend the Australian Animal Disease Spread Model to produce a decision support tool to enable the potential role of feral pigs in an FMD incursion to be assessed. It also aims to assess regional and seasonal influences on the role of feral pigs in a footand-mouth disease outbreak and the potential benefits of feral pig culling as part of an FMD control program. E p i d e m i o l o g i c a l models such as AADIS can assist in the formation of policy for emergency animal diseases such as ASF and FMD, especially when local data does not exist and field studies are not possible or practical.The preliminary program is available by scanning the relevant QR code below %u2013 note the timings are subject to change.The National Feral Pig Conference 2025 Getting feral pig fundamentals rightby HEATHER CHANNONNational Feral PigManagement Coordinator* continued P7