SHIC Funded Research Examines Biosecurity Gaps on Grower-Finisher Sites

Researchers with Iowa State University are evaluating the health status of
growing pig finishing sites to identify and address biosecurity soft spots.
Researchers with Iowa State University, in partnership with the Swine Health
Information Center, are tracking PRRS, PEDV, PDCoV and APP to identify growing-
pig site biosecurity gaps.SHIC Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg says, while biosecurity typically focuses on breeding herd facilities, finishing sites can also act as a reservoir for infection.

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

The charge of the Swine Health Information Center is to monitor for emerging
diseases, be prepared with targeted research and to analyse industry data.All of those things go together within this effort for finishing phase biosecurity analysis, looking at the disease breaks, the monitoring, the research that's needed to figure out the correlation between breeding herd and finishing herd or lack there of and also the analysis of health data.

The real consequence of this is about emerging diseases and potential for
foreign animal diseases.I think that it's really important to be prepared with good scientific base data and information that can help us shore up finishing site biosecurity, especially should ASF get into the country.

We know from experience that finishing sites can be a nidus of infection for
breeding herds, it can be a problem for elimination and, should we get ASF or
some other emerging disease, we have to do a better job with biosecurity on
finishing sites in order to respond to those types of diseases effectively.

Dr. Sundberg notes details on this work is available on the Swine Health Information Center web site at swinehealth.org and additional information will
be released as it becomes available.