SHIC Calls for Research Proposals for Improving Biosecurity, Biocontainment and Transport Biosecurity

The Swine Health Information Center has issued a call for research proposals aimed at developing new tools, techniques and technologies for preventing the introduction of diseases to swine farms, preventing spread from farm to farm and preventing movement from concentration points to back to the farm.

The Swine Health Information Center, the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research and Pork Checkoff are calling for proposals to investigate cost-effective, innovative technologies, protocols or ideas to implement biosecurity during the wean-to-harvest phase of pork production.

SHIC Associate Director Dr. Megan Niederwerder says the focus is bioexclusion for preventing disease introduction on the farm, biocontainment for preventing disease spread from the farm and transportation biosecurity for preventing disease movement from markets and concentration points back to the farm.

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

We just released the request for proposals last week and would like to broadly advertise that research program as an opportunity to develop novel tools and technologies specifically for the wean to harvest phases with regards to bioexclusion, biocontainment as well as transport biosecurity.

There's a pool of 2.3 million dollars for projects.Projects are capped at approximately 200 thousand dollars per project and the proposals are due December 16th of this year. Really outside the box, away from traditional biosecurity.

We know there's biosecurity fatigue and so how can we develop new tools, technology, engineering to make biosecurity more easy to implement and more consistent across the industry.

Dr. Niederwerder notes the request for proposals can be accessed through the Swine Health Information Center web site at swinehealth.org.