Moving on from cats and dogs, let’s talk about one of our major livestock species, pigs.

Are pigs susceptible to the SARS-CoV-2 virus?

  • Kind of, but not really. There are conflicting experimental data that show no or very little susceptibility to the virus.

Why did we talk a lot about pigs and SARS-CoV-2 initially?

Viruses need to attach to cells to infect them, and they do this by binding to specific receptors on the cell. If a virus can’t attach, it can’t infect. Some receptors are very specific to an individual animal species, while some are more general. These differences in receptor binding explain why some viruses only infect

Bacteria are smarter than we give them credit for.
Or maybe we’re not a bright as we think we are.

Antimicrobial stewardship is sometimes (wrongly) assumed to simply be the practice of “using fewer antimicrobials,” but it’s more complex than that, because the issue is complex. At face value, overall reduction in antimicrobial use is

It was only a matter of time, so it’s not particularly surprising, but a potentially devastating pig disease has made its way into Ontario. It’s not a concern to people or other animals, but it’s worth mentioning here anyway (both to say it’s not a public health or non-pig health concern, and since it’s a