Call for Research Proposals Under Wean-to-Harvest Biosecurity Program Extended

The Swine Health Information Center has extended the call for research proposals under the Wean-to-Harvest Biosecurity program.The second call for research proposals under the 2.3 million dollar Wean-to-Harvest Biosecurity program, an initiative of the Swine Health Information Center, the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research and Pork Checkoff, has been extended.

Swine Health Information Center Associate Director Dr. Megan Niederwerder says an industry wide task force has gone through the proposals received by the original April 30th deadline and expects to announce projects selected for funding soon.

Quote-Dr. Megan Niederwerder-Swine Health Information Center:

Until then we've announced that we are going to continue to solicit proposals on a rolling basis for specific targeted research priorities.The reason that we wanted to do that continued solicitation for proposals was because there were several research priorities that have not been adequately addressed with the proposals that have been submitted thus far.

We have several research priorities that are continued to be of interest and ideas by which we are soliciting proposals.Those include packing plant or other first point of concentration biocontainment.Also, alternatives to traditional truck washes, including cleaning and disinfecting the trailer either without water or without heat after an initial water flush.

The third one we're looking at is evaluating artificial intelligence or other novel technologies to both monitor and evaluate biosecurity compliance on the farm also continuing to look at novel ways in which mortalities can be managed under the highest biosecurity levels and also looking at industry barriers to biosecurity adoption and compliance and how do we overcome those barriers.

Dr. Niederwerder says information on the wean to harvest biosecurity program, the call for research proposals and the proposal template can be accessed at swinehealth.org.She encourages anyone interested to submit their proposals as soon as possible.