In Vietnam, the pig farmings who until quite recently were affected by foot-and-mouth epizootic now face a new deadly disease: African swine fever. The result: a steady decline in the pig population, which fell by more than 10% between 2017 and 2018. Since 2006, Virbac has been dedicated to improving production conditions for Vietnamese pig farmers by offering them solutions that are adapted to their everyday needs, which are constantly changing depending on local health situations.

The first element of this support: technical expertise. This comes not only in the form of a wide range of products made available to farmers (vaccines, nutritional, hormonal and antibiotic solutions), but also as services that are offered directly on-site. For example, to assist with disease prevention, Virbac teams take colostrum samples from sows and send them directly to an analytical laboratory to test for the presence of maternal antibodies. Virbac also regularly publishes scientific articles on the prevention and treatment of the main pathologies on its website in Vietnam.

Since 2008, Virbac has also developed a unique association in the country, made up of four pig-farming clubs (Bien Hoa, Gia Kiem, Long Khanh, Cho Gao) and one poultry-farming club (Trang Bom). These organizations seek to develop a sustainable collaboration with farmers through awareness and training. The clubs currently focus their activity around monthly meetings centered on exchange with industry experts and visits to farms. These provide the occasion to share technical documents to increase understanding of health issues and potential treatments, and to answer farmers’ questions regarding specific aspects of their farms. Meanwhile, Virbac teams conduct numerous studies to assist in the detection of emerging diseases, to provide greater knowledge of local epidemiology, and to help develop new prevention and treatment techniques. At the end of 2018, the Vietnam Virbac Club, made up of no fewer than 125 farmers, celebrated its 10^th anniversary.

Thanks to these different initiatives, Virbac continues to forge close ties and unique partnerships with Vietnamese farmers in order to improve farming conditions.