Researchers to Evaluate Disease Transmission Risk Posed by Soy Imports

Researchers involved in the assessment of the risk of disease transmission through feed ingredients will zero in on soy imports. The risk of disease transmission associated with pathogens harbored in soy-products has prompted Kansas State University to launch a project on behalf of the Swine Health Information Center to evaluate the risk posed by soy imports.

SHIC Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg explains feed ingredients are imported from different foreign animal disease positive countries and soybean meal appears to be one of the most effective in harboring and transmitting viruses.

Clip-Dr. Paul Sundberg-Swine Health Information Center:

This is part of a series of investigations. First, we had to figure out if feed ingredients could be a risk. I think we've got that answered, that the answer is most probably yes. It's probably a small risk overall in proportion to the others but it certainly is a risk and any risk deserves to mitigated and that window deserves to be closed.

Next, we needed to answer questions about the detection of foreign animal diseases in feed ingredients and we worked on the lab and the sampling issues to be able to do that in different feed ingredients.

If we were going to provide information to producers about the risks of foreign animal diseases in these ingredients, the next step is to be able to offer to them an analysis of how much of these ingredients are actually being imported and what countries are positive for foreign animal diseases that are exporting their feed ingredients to the U.S.

That's been completed now with this project. The next step is an additional project that we will be doing in the future and looking at how those feed ingredients are distributed around the country.