Swine industry leaders have had success eradicating M. hyopneumoniae using the principles described here. “Success” is defined as meeting the key goals of the eradication: investing resources leading to sustainable elimination of the organism, paving the way to continued improvements in performance, resulting in reducing/eliminating M. hyopneumoniae disease impact/control expenses and, capturing increased revenue due to better productivity of M. hyopneumoniae-negative pigs. Simply put – success is not only getting free of M. hyopneumoniae, success is staying free from M. hyopneumoniae as long as possible (and at least long enough) to generate an overall positive financial return on the eradication and prevention investments.

Various economic models have been developed to assess pathogen eradication projects. For example, one such model compared M. hyopneumoniae positive and negative herd performance data from a production system and costs and returns of two eradication programs. The benefit of elimination was $877,375 for a 5,000-sow farm per year, or $7 per pig marketed. A two-month payback period after the start of marketing M. hyopneumoniae negative pigs was estimated for herd closure and medication programs and seven months for the medication protocol.