Thanks for your input. Your experience with pigs and knowledge of this strep suis helps, because it's first hand. This just doesn't sound like strep suis to me--not the right kind of response for something like that, if I'm reading correctly. It just doesn't make sense to "register" pigs, frankly.
I'm waiting to hear what Kelly_2000 knows about it too, if anything, her field is virology...
Actually registering the herds makes sense. Within the past 5 years Iowa has been irradicated of Pseudorabies, and the first step was testing each herd. And then IDing the herd as to Positive or Negative.
Each pig wasn't tested, but a "Representative Sampling" was done. 2 of every 10 pigs, or some other ratio (I don't know the actual ratio, I'm just giving an example for those who don't understand the "Sampling" lingo)
Once a herd was identified as positive, then innoculations were ordered. It took years to get rid of the stuff. It was an airborne virus.
So sending 50,000 people out to identify the pigs is a possibility. The thing I'm questioning is the term 'identify'. It's my guess this doesn't mean they're going to put an ID tag in each animals ear, or a tatoo on their back. I'm thinking they will pull some representative samples like I describe above.
Conception to Birth for swine is 3 Months, 3 Weeks and 3 Days. So these 50,000 people will no sooner get done and they'll have to go back and start all over again if they're going to be serious about this.