Plant fined for violating psuedorabies law

The state has issued its first civil penalty for violation of the new pseudorabies law. Officials say hog producer Consolidated Nutrition, which has facilities in Newton and Washington, is being fined 25-hundred dollars.Ron Rowland, director of the Iowa Ag Department’s Regulatory Division, says Consolidated Nutrition didn’t vaccinate pigs upon bringing them to Iowa and didn’t test them for the swine disease. He says the company is not fighting the fine.Rowland says it’s been a focused twelve-year effort to eliminate pseudorabies in Iowa.This spring, legislators voted to require mandatory vaccinations in the state’s northern two-thirds. Rowland says the disease has -almost- been wiped out, but there are still patches of it surviving.Pseudorabies is a respiratory disease spread easily through hogs but not through humans.