The Swine Health Information Center (SHIC) has added a new “facilities” category to its domestic swine disease monitoring report to help pork producers and veterinarians keep on top of disease transmission risks due to environmental contamination.
SHIC Associate Director Dr. Lisa Becton says the new category includes PCR tests from truck washes, vehicles, and packing plants to track enteric coronavirus activity from outside the farms.
This new category is a reflection of the changes that are seen in sample submission to the different diagnostic labs. Along with our typical animal sampling strategies, veterinarians and producers are submitting more environmental sample because this can provide a broader picture of disease status and or at least risk across the system and gives people a better picture of where to be able to focus intervention strategies such as washing and disinfection.
These sample may be swabs or other types of samples that are coming from environment. This information is being evaluated by producers and their veterinarians to look at the holistic picture of what’s happening in their farm or system and also what are the points of risk that they’re seeing, whether that be on farm or in their trailers or even in transportation biosecurity interfaces such as grow finish and the plant or even nursery to finish.
The intent of this information and reporting is to be able to provide a picture of where those risks are occurring and then help guide strategies to reduce potential viral contamination and help with potential elimination or disease management strategies.
~ Dr. Lisa Becton, Swine Health Information Center
Dr. Becton says the goal is to identify across a farm, the potential areas of contamination, where the virus is persisting and then apply that to how different strategies can be utilized to reduce those risks. SHIC’s domestic and global swine disease monitoring reports can be accessed at https://www.swinehealth.org/.
