Dr. Patrick Webb, assistant chief veterinarian with the National Pork Board, said the threat of detecting a foreign and emerging animal disease in the U.S. underscores the importance of ensuring producers have the documentation tools and preparedness plans to prevent, detect, and quickly respond, if needed. Investment in surveillance and active, precise biosecurity from our producers and transporters remains vital.
“Foreign and emerging diseases are important, but focus on keeping them out. Focus on a response plan if they do get here. Make sure we detect them as early as possible, and make sure that we respond to them as early as possible, and so, we’ll continue to promote a lot of the programs that we’ve been working on for years to help do that. Keeping things out-that’s working with USDA and with Homeland Security to make sure that they’re doing everything they can to protect our borders.”
Webb shared that traceability tools help identify and track animal movements, a critical component for animal health officials to regionalize disease. Effective on-farm tools can help limit the spread of disease and improve response efforts.
“The AgView database dashboard for traceability for our pork producers. Very important information state vets are going to need. We’re also going to need to keep diseases from coming on and off the farm. That’s the Secure Pork Supply. That’s an important program for our producers to make sure that they have an enhanced biosecurity plan that elevates the level of protection for them in an outbreak scenario. And then it’s the surveillance side of things. That’s the Certified Swine Sampler Collector program. Those are folks that have been trained in order to take samples on behalf of an accredited veterinarian during an outbreak. So basically, we’re multiplying the number of folks that can do the work, which supports our state and federal counterparts who are going to be very limited on resources.”
Monitoring and early detection of emerging diseases is part of the industry-led National Swine Health Strategy. He noted that Foot and Mouth Disease has come full circle as a key concern in global disease monitoring, highlighting the importance of remaining vigilant as disease outbreaks continue to occur in other parts of the world.
“For instance, there is a strain of foot and mouth disease. It’s called SAT One that has been moving through countries over in Africa and other places very, very rapidly. I mean, this is good information to know. You know, when I first started working in emergency preparedness, FMD was all the hot topic in 2001, and now it seems like that full circle. ‘Yeah, ASF is a concern, but man, look over here. Here comes that FMD again.’ So, knowing and understanding risk pathways is important, and then mitigating that. Working with USDA, working with Customs and Border Protection to make sure that we’re protecting the border, and making sure we’re not bringing things in that we don’t want here.”
The National Swine Health Strategy is a producer-led initiative to improve the health of the U.S. swine herd. This isn’t something happening around you; it’s something that happens because of you. Learn more at porkcheckoff.org.