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The Swine Health Information Center (SHIC) supports a near real-time monitoring system for swine diseases around the world. Now, practitioners, scientists, allied industry personnel, and producers in the US have the opportunity to submit information on outbreaks and epidemics happening worldwide using the UMN Spontaneous reporting tool. This information, when verified, will be included in SHIC’s Global Disease Monitoring Report, prepared by University of Minnesota (UMN) staff. The report is a systematic way to monitor new or emerging diseases around the globe to help keep the US pork industry informed of potential risks. An international network of collaborators spontaneously reporting disease events will contribute to the development of this near real-time global monitoring system for swine diseases.
The program’s goal is early detection and warning of disease events that may affect the US swine industry, such as new outbreaks of Foreign Animal Diseases or emergence of a disease in a country with remarkable participation in international trade. The Spontaneous reporting tool is a pilot project to nimbly supplement that information and increase awareness in the swine industry. Collaborators on the Global Disease Monitoring Report at UMN emphasize this new reporting tool can be a helpful addition to the official OIE health reports, as it becomes an international network of collaboration and the information of potential threats come as early as possible.
Once submitted, information shared via the Spontaneous reporting tool will be reviewed by the group of experts who prepare the Global Disease Monitoring Report, and analyzed by epidemiologists and local network for credibility. Confirmed and checked data will be included in bi-monthly reports prepared by UMN and shared by SHIC, aiming to inform and prepare the US. Unconfirmed rumors will not be published. The Spontaneous reporting tool is a Qualtrics® form and all submissions go into the UMN database and will be reviewed by the team. Those submitting information are asked to enter their names.
If you are aware of epidemics or outbreaks overseas of diseases not currently in the US or that could potentially be a threat to the US swine industry, please share your insights. To be most helpful, your submission will include more than just the name of the disease but additional data such as mortality, morbidity, and impacts on production rates.
Your support and participation in the global disease monitoring effort is appreciated. The ultimate goal is preparedness and capturing the insights of those in the swine industry will enhance present efforts.
The pork industry has spent millions to better understand viruses, however, it is often bacteria that kills the pig. In addition, current biosecurity practices are primarily devised to keep viruses out and potentially fail to address the endemic nature of bacteria in a herd. To go along with the Swine Health Information Center’s (SHIC) Swine Disease Matrix, a prioritized list of endemic and foreign swine viruses, a Bacterial Swine Disease Matrix has been developed. This new tool will guide a focused look at the US pork industry’s highest bacterial risks, while SHIC continues to remain focused on emerging viral pathogens. Both are important tools and part of SHIC’s mission to protect and enhance the health of the United States swine herd.
The bacterial matrix and related information will be leveraged as it is used and applied by USDA, National Pork Board, National Pork Producers Council, American Association of Swine Veterinarians, veterinary diagnostic labs, and more to help consideration of bacterial pathogen priorities and importance. As the matrix is refined, the process will determine what the industry knows about the bacteria as well as identify knowledge gaps – what needs to be studied. Resulting information will be used to guide action to combat the consequences of bacterial disease as well as funding for further study and research. The bacterial matrix also enables searching and focus of SHIC’s domestic disease monitoring program to see if any of these bacteria are moving or emerging.
SHIC invites practitioners and other scientists from related disciplines to review the Bacterial Swine Disease Matrix Top 10 Bacteria (below) and provide their input by emailing SHIC Executive Director Dr Paul Sundberg at [email protected]. Commentary, opinion, and other constructive input will help perfect the matrix, increasing its relevance and application.
Development of the Bacterial Swine Disease Matrix started with a literature review to identify bacteria known to infect and be a pig health risk. A group of experts convened to establish criteria to rank bacteria with bold type noting high priorities in subcriteria:
The criteria and list were sent to a panel of expert bacteriologists and diagnosticians. Each independently gave their individual scores. Scores were averaged and the bacteria ranked from those averages. Finally, SHIC’s Monitoring and Analysis Working Group then reviewed and discussed the ranking.
SHIC used the original Swine Disease Matrix to prioritize research, diagnostic development, and educational efforts and offers the bacterial matrix to research funding agencies for the same purpose. It will also be used to further refine and develop the SHIC domestic disease monitoring program by helping to focus monitoring on high priority or emerging bacterial diseases.
The Swine Health Information Center (SHIC) revised the priority of African swine fever (ASF) on the Swine Disease Matrix from an average risk score of 7.7 to 8.3. This moved ASF from third on the Matrix to second. This action comes as multiple new outbreaks of ASF in China were reported in August and September, now totaling more than 20. Westward spread of ASF was observed with Bulgaria reporting its first case and Romania struggling to control the epidemic. On September 14, the OIE official report of the first ASF case in Belgium was released with three additional cases confirmed the following day by the Federal Agriculture Minister.
The outbreak in Belgium may represent a change in the epidemiologic status of ASF worldwide. The disease may have reached pandemic proportions. Pandemic seems an appropriate description as ASF moves across Europe and over considerable distances in China recently, in addition to the sustained occurrence of outbreaks in Africa and Russia.
The current situation creates an alert to the international trade of pork, and many countries are revising their commercial agreements with affected countries. Meetings in affected geographies are ongoing with plans to mitigate disease spread being developed. This includes proposals to ban the movement, hunting, and feeding of wild boars.
Read more about ASF cases in the SHIC Global Disease Monitoring Reports. Updated reports will be posted every other week.
On September 5, 2018, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials met with US pork sector groups, including the American Association of Swine Veterinarians, National Pork Board, National Pork Producers Council, and Swine Health Information Center to discuss additional measures to prevent the spread of African swine fever (ASF) to the United States. The disease is currently active in China and some European countries. This document captures the prevention segment of the discussion. More information on diagnostic preparedness, surveillance, and response will be provided soon.
You don’t know what you don’t know. And you don’t always know what your colleagues do know. Because the potential for new, emerging, and foreign animal diseases to affect the US swine herd is an industry-wide concern, the Swine Health Information Center (SHIC) recently coordinated a meeting of the project coordinators of independent and voluntary swine health and producer information sharing programs around the country. Hosted by The Ohio State University Veterinary School faculty, the purpose was to discuss successes and challenges of individual programs in Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the Morrison Swine Health Monitoring Project. Participants shared ways each program could be improved, IT issues, premises ID verification, and a new proposal for giving state animal health officials real-time information that could help in getting movement permits in the face of a high consequence disease outbreaks.
As the meeting unfolded, participants, including representatives of the National Pork Board and American Association of Swine Veterinarians, shared ideas on managing data and IT solutions. They looked at tools available for these tasks and their ability to help producers with the information gathered and shared in the process. Additionally, participants talked about the goals of their programs – short-term as well as three to five years from now. All worked together to identify ways to help each program improve independently and together as resources for pork producers.
Dr. Patrick Webb of the National Pork Board shared updates to the Secure Pork Supply (SPS) program during the gathering. Another topic discussed related to premises ID systems in each state with the need for consistent validation and updating of the information.
Premises identification is the foundation for emergency preparedness. It is absolutely vital pork producers’ premises identification numbers (PIN) are accurate and geo-located to the site where pigs are housed. Since premises registration occurs at the state level, it is important pork producers work with their state animal health official to update premises information annually, or when a change of the site’s ownership occurs, to ensure state premises databases remain as accurate as possible.
Pork producers can validate individual premises and verify addresses using National Pork Board’s premises verification page here or, for up to 100 PINS in a batch upload, here. When a premises identification number is entered, the street address for the site is returned. Producers can then compare the returned street address to what is in their records. If they are not the same, this can be fixed by working with the state animal health official in the state where the premises is located. If a street address is not returned, at all, it is usually because the PIN was incorrectly entered.
Dr. Maryn Ptaschinski of the Institute for Infectious Animal Diseases talked with the project coordinators about the AgView Program. Supplemental to SPS, the AgView database and dashboard is currently under development to support business continuity in the case of a trade-limiting foreign animal disease of swine. It will allow pork producers participating in the SPS plan to share data in a rapid, efficient, and secure way with state animal health officials. As a result, these officials will have easy-to-use information to accelerate risk-based decision-making for permitting pig movements.
The AgView system will also have the capacity for day-to-day use by producers. It will allow them to consolidate production, movement, and lab data into one location for analysis and decision making. The first release of the AgView system is scheduled for February 2019.
SHIC continues to coordinate with industry partners to provide the best information and resources to pork producers about emerging disease affecting their herd health and livelihood. This meeting connected several independent programs to facilitate their success through sharing best practices and information.
The October Domestic Disease Monitoring Report shows porcine reproductive respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSv) RNA detection level has been within the predicted values in the previous nine weeks. The pattern of detection of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDv) RNA continues to meet the expected values. Porcine deltacorona virus (PDCoV) detection has returned to expected values though there has been a relative increase in detection of this virus in the last three weeks of every year since 2015. Based on the predicting model, it is expected a relative increase in PEDv and PDCoV should be expected upcoming weeks. Fall 2018 is starting with detection of respiratory virus cases similar to this time in previous years. COCC is appearing between the top 10 agents detected on enteric tissues. As a comparison, there were 12 cases in September, October, and November 2017, and 14 cases in the three months of 2016.
Emerging diseases continue to be monitored. The European Union (EU) pig industry discussed measures to contain current African swine fever (ASF) cases in Belgium and eastern Europe. Countries such as South Korea, China, Taiwan, Belarus, Mexico, the Philippines, Japan, South Africa, Serbia, Singapore, Uruguay, Australia, and Malaysia have restricted pork imports from infected regions, whereas Ukraine, China, South Korea, Belarus, and Serbia have temporarily banned the purchase of swine feed from Belgium. Some EU countries, such as France, The Netherlands, and Ireland, are pushing for stricter measures to prevent ASF spread into new countries.
Disclaimer: It is expected that this trend of ASF outbreaks will continue, thus we will no longer release announcements of individual outbreaks. Updates will be released if something pertinent to the US pork producers occurs. Compiled summaries will be released every other week.
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