Detailed Pig Movement Records Key in Event of Foreign Animal Disease Outbreak

Iowa's State Veterinarian suggests detailed records of pig movements will be critical in helping resume the movement of pigs in the event of a foreign animal disease outbreak. What to Expect in an ASF Outbreak was the focus of the fourth in a series of five USDA-APHIS African Swine Fever Action Week Webinars last week.

Dr. Jeff Kaisand, with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, notes when a foreign animal disease happens it becomes a regulatory disease and what becomes difficult is there are so many connections from infected premises.

Clip-Dr. Jeff Kaisand-Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship:

We can talk about, whether it's maintenance workers, whether it's load crews that load pigs in the middle of the night and travel several miles down the road to load pigs at another site. What I'm trying to point out is all of those connections and the work that we have to do with the contact tracing and trying to figure out where all the other sites are.

We need everybody's help during that process. We're going to look at the infected premise and work outward from that infected premise. We need help from everybody, veterinarians working with their producers. When we issue these network-based control quarantines, some of those outer premises that you could say are distant, early related or don't have direct contact, we need help in working though that so we can start movements back up within those quarantines and premise that are not directly associated but we need to show some information of how they are not directly related to that infected premise directly so we all have to work together.

That's were keeping those good records, being able to provide them, being able to help us work through them as regulatory officials is going to be very critical.