Swine Health Information Center Research Builds Knowledge for Pathogen Risk in Feed

Research conducted on behalf of the Swine Health Information Center is helping build a foundation of knowledge for pathogen risk in feed. Since it was founded in 2015, the risk of feed and the mitigation of feed as a potential route for swine disease introduction has been one of the Swine Health Information Center's research priorities.

SHIC Associate Director Dr. Megan Niederwerder says, since that time, the center has invested in over 20 different projects to increase our knowledge of the risks and to determine how to best mitigate those risks.

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

SHIC has partnered with several academic universities, private industry, government researchers to start asking the questions about feed with different pathogens. When we think about how we start investigating this, we first start looking at what's the risk of importation, so what's the volume of feed ingredients that are actually imported into the U.S. from countries that have some of these circulating foreign animal diseases that are of concern to the U.S. industry?

That was one of the first steps but also looking at can the virus be transmitted through the natural consumption of feed? Can physical or chemical mitigation strategies be utilized to reduce the risk of virus transmission in feed, what's the risk of certain viruses being introduced into feed, looking at modeling and risk assessment and then are there endemic diseases that are at risk for feed being a route for introduction and transmission and can we use field investigations to learn more about how even endemic viruses could be spread though feed?