New World Screwworm: Fact Sheet & SHIC Article 6/10/2026 & USDA NWS Website & SHIC/AASV NWS Webinar (8/4/2026)
New World Screwworm: Fact Sheet & SHIC Article 6/10/2026 & USDA NWS Website & SHIC/AASV NWS Webinar (8/4/2026)
The Swine Health Information Center, launched in 2015 with Pork Checkoff funding, protects and enhances the health of the US swine herd by minimizing the impact of emerging disease threats through preparedness, coordinated communications, global disease monitoring, analysis of swine health data, and targeted research investments.
The Swine Health Information Center, established as an independent 501(c)3 non-profit organization on July 4, 2015, will be integrated into the National Pork Board per an agreement recently signed by both boards of directors. Details of the integration are being finalized with the expectation SHIC will cease independent operations by the end of 2026.
“Our purpose is not to close the chapter on SHIC’s work. It is to entrust that work to NPB and position it to serve producers for the long term,” explained Joseph Dykhuis, president, SHIC Board of Directors. “For more than a decade, SHIC has set the standard for producer-led animal health monitoring, research, and analysis efforts. Its singular focus on emerging disease, small and highly engaged board, expert working groups and task forces, experienced staff, trusted scientific network, and disciplined research process produced a combination of speed, credibility, and practical value that is rare in the industry. Those capabilities helped producers and veterinarians see threats earlier, fund answers faster, and put useful information to work.”
The vision for this integration includes extraordinary opportunity for the US pork industry in Dykhuis’s opinion. “For producers, the integration creates an opportunity for SHIC to become a single, trusted destination for swine health information. Whether a disease threat is emerging, endemic, or foreign, producers and veterinarians should have a clear place to go for trusted monitoring, research, information, and practical tools,” he remarked.
SHIC’s Unwavering Mission
Since the beginning, SHIC held a singular focus on swine health, separate from the missions of other pork industry organizations in the United States. SHIC’s mission is to protect and enhance the health of the US swine herd by minimizing the impact of emerging disease threats through preparedness, coordinated communications, global disease monitoring, analysis of swine health data, and targeted research investments. With nimbleness as a key objective, the organization’s mission has been both steadfast and evolving as SHIC responded to industry needs.
The SHIC Board recognizes the early leadership and contributions of Dr. Gene Erickson and Jim Niewold as well as founding board members Dr. Matt Anderson, Mark Greenwood, Dr. Howard Hill, Dr. Brett Kaysen, Bill Luckey, Dr. Daryl Olsen, Mark Schwartz, Dr. Mike Terrill, and Dr. Matthew Turner. Original Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg then Drs. Megan Niederwerder and Lisa Becton, Rhea Schirm, Barb Determan and her Heartland Marketing Group team played key roles. SHIC’s Board members, the many producers, veterinarians, researchers, diagnostic laboratories, working-group members (n=79), task-force members, and partner organizations all made SHIC effective. “Their work created an organization, a body of knowledge, and a standard of performance that must carry forward,” Dykhuis stated.
Following the integration, SHIC will be led by NPB staff. After serving as SHIC’s executive director and providing dedicated leadership to the organization and its mission, Dr. Niederwerder elected to conclude her service with SHIC on September 18, 2026. SHIC’s Dr. Becton assumed executive director duties until completion of the integration, which is expected by the end of 2026.
“I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have served SHIC and the US pork industry, and I appreciate the board’s support and the trust they placed in me to lead the organization,” said Dr. Niederwerder. “It has been a privilege to work alongside such talented colleagues, producers, researchers, veterinarians, and industry partners who share a commitment to protecting and advancing swine health. I am extremely proud of what we have accomplished together and of the lasting impact SHIC will continue to have on the industry. I am also grateful to Lisa for stepping into the executive director role and am committed to supporting her and helping ensure a smooth transition.”
The SHIC Board extends its sincere gratitude to Dr. Niederwerder for her leadership, service, and significant contributions to furthering SHIC’s emerging disease mission; her work has strengthened the organization and its impact on behalf of US pork producers. The Board also extends its sincere appreciation to Dr. Becton for her steadfast leadership and meaningful contributions to advancing SHIC’s mission.
Using a flat and results-driven structure has allowed SHIC to deliver extraordinary results to the industry it serves. Primarily funded by Pork Checkoff investment, the team at SHIC made leveraging those dollars a key priority to fund disease monitoring and research relevant to emerging diseases. SHIC’s goal is to provide producers with the knowledge and tools to be better prepared to prevent the devastating impact of diseases, such as porcine epidemic diarrhea virus in 2013, when too little was known about the threat this emerging disease posed.
SHIC’s Return on Pork Producer Investment
Sharing information gained through research funded has elevated the swine health landscape in the US. Since 2015, 535 research proposals have been received by SHIC and $24,440,859 (Checkoff and non-Checkoff sourced) in funding has been contracted to inform pork producers, their swine veterinarians, and allied industry partners. In addition, essential partnerships were fostered between SHIC, the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research, and USDA to develop, fund, and deliver outcomes to swine producers and further leverage producer funds. Key research initiatives include:
▪️ African swine fever research in Vietnam
▪️African swine fever survivability in feed research
▪️Wean-to-Harvest Biosecurity Research Program
▪️Japanese Encephalitis Virus Research Program
▪️H5N1 Risk to Swine Research Program
▪️Yearly plan of work open and targeted RFP research programs
While the focus was squarely on emerging, transboundary, and foreign animal disease monitoring, prevention, preparedness, and response strategies, SHIC developed unique programs specifically to serve the US pork industry. These programs include:
▪️Domestic Swine Disease Monitoring Report (Swine Disease Reporting System, Iowa State University)
▪️Global Swine Disease Monitoring Report (University of Minnesota)
▪️Standardized Outbreak Investigation Program (Iowa State University)
▪️SHIC Rapid Response Program (Iowa State University)
▪️Diagnostic Fee Assistance Program
▪️SHIC monthly enewsletter and eblasts
▪️SHIC Talk Podcast
▪️SHIC/American Association of Swine Veterinarians Webinars (conducted by ISU Swine Medicine Education Center)
With the expansive group of producers, practitioners, academicians, and allied industry partners engaged in SHIC’s governance, research priority setting and application, research solicitation, review, and funding, results have been above reproach.
See the 2015-2021 SHIC Program Review here.
See the Program Review: Return on Producers’ Investment (April 2021–March 2026) here.
Integration Mission and Charge to NPB
Bringing SHIC’s emerging-disease capabilities together with NPB’s broader swine-health resources can create useful synergy, per Dykhuis. “SHIC’s emerging-disease preparedness can benefit from endemic-disease knowledge and infrastructure, while endemic-disease programs can benefit from SHIC’s vigilance, rapid-response culture, and research discipline,” he commented.
Dykhuis points to the National Swine Health Strategy as a producer-led platform for alignment. “The SHIC Board’s expectation is straightforward: SHIC has established a high standard for producer-led animal health, and the National Swine Health Strategy should meet and build upon that standard. Integration should widen access to expertise and resources without diluting SHIC’s focus, slowing its response, or weakening the producer and veterinary voices that shaped its success,” he stressed.
Delivering an impactful return on producers’ investment in SHIC can be measured in countless ways. The organization has delivered enhanced disease monitoring systems and insights, improved industry preparedness with valuable tools, developed strong collaboration among producers, veterinarians, industry organizations, universities, veterinary diagnostic labs, and government agencies, and delivered high quality outcomes.
Dykhuis shared an outline of what SHIC’s expectations are moving forward with the integration:
Mission and leadership. Emerging disease remains a visible, enduring priority with dedicated technical leadership, staff capacity, and budget consideration.
Speed and scientific rigor. Disease signals, urgent communications, research priorities, proposal review, contracting, and funding decisions remain timely, expert-driven, and responsive to changing risk.
Producer and veterinary engagement. The expertise of current SHIC Board members, working-group and task-force members, American Association of Swine Veterinarians, National Pork Producers Council, researchers, diagnostic laboratories, and other partners should continue to inform priorities and emerging-disease work.
Continuity and stewardship. Active contracts, monitoring reports, research funds, communications, relationships, archives, the SHIC brand, and institutional knowledge transfer without interruption or loss of value.
Accountability. NPB reports clearly on priorities, investments, outcomes, stakeholder participation, and producer value.
“The SHIC Board will remain engaged in helping ensure continuity and producer value throughout the transition,” he said. “We ask NPB to treat SHIC’s record not simply as a collection of assets and programs, but as proven capabilities and principles. SHIC’s speed, judgment, scientific rigor, responsiveness, and focus on producers are worth preserving.
“We are grateful for what SHIC has accomplished and confident that its mission can grow within NPB if both organizations approach the transition with transparency, discipline, and respect for the people and practices that built SHIC. This is a warm handoff of a producer-created responsibility: protect the US swine herd by identifying emerging threats, generating trusted answers, and moving useful information quickly to the people who need it.”
Additional former SHIC Board members include Gene Noem along with Drs. Russ Nugent and Jeremy Pittman. Current SHIC Board members, in addition to Dykhuis, are Kent Bang, Trish Cook, Alayne Johnson, Dr. Seth Krantz, Dr. Jay Miller, Sarah Pillen, JD, Dr. Paul Ruen, and Dr. Pete Thomas.
The Swine Health Information Center funded a study to develop a viral smoke detector-like device for use in swine barns to autonomously detect viral pathogens directly from air in a continuous fashion. The study was led by Dr. Igor Paprotny, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago, in collaboration with Dr. Michael Caffrey, College of Medicine at University of Illinois Chicago and Drs. Ying Fang and Joseph Connor, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. During the study, the research team developed several viral smoke detector-like prototypes, adapted from the bioAerium airborne pathogen sensing platform previously invented by Drs. Paprotny and Caffrey, to operate in swine farm environments. Results showed the prototypes were able to consistently detect PRRSV with sensitivity comparable to that obtained through oral fluid sampling. Pork producers and their veterinarians would consequently have an effective, inexpensive, less hands-on method for virus detection, should the prototype be further refined and developed for commercial use.
Find the industry summary for SHIC project 24-078 here.
Key Producer Outcomes:
The overarching goal of the project was to develop a new biosecurity tool to allow producers to reduce losses to their swine population through active monitoring and early outbreak detection. The more specific objective of this project was to adapt the bioAerium platform, a real-time detector for airborne viral pathogens (called a viral smoke detector) for rapid sensing of airborne swine viruses. The smoke detector performance was to be validated in actual swine farm environments. Most notably, the sensor uses nucleic acid amplification (NAA) techniques to achieve high sensitivity necessary for real-time airborne pathogen detection. Specifically, aerosol collection is automatically followed by an NAA technique called LAMP. LAMP has a comparable sensitivity to polymerase chain reaction but avoids temperature cycling, facilitating use in an inexpensive field-deployable device. The project initially focused on three target viruses: PRRSV, IAV-S, and PEDV. However, based on feedback from producers, the focus switched to PRRSV largely due to its significant impact on domestic swine production, and because the sensor can be easily adapted to detect other target viruses by simply swapping target reagents.
Once commercialized, these viral smoke detectors are expected to be inexpensive and able to simultaneously test for multiple viral pathogens. A network of such sensors deployed throughout the farm (see Figure 1) could potentially enable producers to continuously obtain a real-time snapshot and support early detection of essentially any airborne infections in their swine population. Dr. Paprotny and his team noted that the results indicate that these prototype viral smoke detectors could be used as an effective tool for continuous monitoring of viral infections in swine populations and can assist the producers in early identification of emerging outbreaks.
One of the Swine Health Information Center’s first successes was to align veterinary diagnostic labs in pig-dense areas to be able to share information and, consequently, be better able to track swine disease information. The resulting SHIC-funded Swine Disease Reporting System provides US pork industry stakeholders with disease-surveillance information generated from veterinary diagnostic laboratory data. Additionally, the disease diagnosis (Dx) code system developed at the Iowa State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory captures pathologist-confirmed tissue disease diagnoses using a standardized coding framework. With SHIC funding, a project to transfer and implement the ISU-VDL Dx code system at the Ohio Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, now known as the Ohio Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, was successful. This represents the next step in VDL sharing and establishes prospective reporting of confirmed tissue disease diagnoses into the SDRS.
The Dx code sharing project was led by Drs. Giovani Trevisan and Daniel Linhares with their colleagues at the ISU College of Veterinary Medicine. The ISU-VDL structured framework capable of being expanded to report confirmed tissue disease diagnoses for over 40 pathogens affecting the US swine industry providing a benefit to producers seeking information on the pathogens affecting their herds and productivity was used.
Read the full report of SHIC project 25-068 here.
The OH-VDL became the first veterinary diagnostic laboratory outside ISU-VDL to adopt the Dx code framework and report confirmed tissue diagnoses in SDRS. Consequently, the project established the first multi-laboratory database of standardized confirmed tissue diagnoses and demonstrated that diagnostician-assigned disease diagnoses can be successfully shared and aggregated across institutions. These developments expand geographic coverage, improve the representation of surveillance data, and provide a scalable model for future participation by additional veterinary diagnostic laboratories.
The objective for the project included 1) Transfer the current ISU VDL disease diagnosis Dx code matrix to OH-VDL, 2) Implement the disease diagnosis system at OH-VDL, and 3) Prospectively report confirmed tissue disease diagnosis from OH-VDL to SDRS.
The project included transferring the Dx code matrix, implementing Dx code capture within the OH-VDL laboratory information management system (LIMS), developing an automated application programming interface (API) for Dx code collection and reporting to SDRS, collation with ISU VDL data, and reporting in the SDRS monthly PDF reporting.
Diagnoses from both the ISU-VDL and OH-VDL provide a valuable surveillance tool, allowing the capture of trends in confirmed disease occurrence, beyond pathogen detection, since they rely on the final interpretation of clinical history, pathology findings, and laboratory testing results by a diagnostician.
The ISU-VDL developed Dx code system standardizes the recording of confirmed tissue diagnoses. The coding framework captures the affected system, insult type, lesion, and disease process or etiology. This allows diagnostician conclusions to be stored as structured data and facilitates case retrieval, disease monitoring, and epidemiological analyses (Derscheid et al., 2021). Aggregated Dx code data have subsequently been used to support disease surveillance dashboards and reporting through SDRS (Trevisan et al., 2021).
OH-VDL cases originated mostly from Ohio but also from other states like West Virginia, expanding the geographic coverage of tissue-disease surveillance. In addition, project outcomes contributed to the peer-reviewed publication “Macroepidemiologic assessment of swine disease co-occurrences in the United States of America” (Cezar et al., 2026), which described the successful transfer of the Dx code methodology and demonstrated the feasibility of integrating confirmed tissue diagnoses across institutions.
Understanding disease occurrence by region, production type, and age category provides valuable information to support animal health decision-making and disease control efforts. The resulting infrastructure provides a scalable foundation for participation of additional laboratories and supports broader monitoring of endemic swine diseases using standardized, pathologist-confirmed diagnoses.
Multiple pathogens are frequently detected within the same diagnostic investigation case, complicating diagnosis, disease management, and efforts to understand disease patterns across the US swine population. A study funded by the Swine Health Information Center and led by Dr. Guilherme Cezar, then with Iowa State University, provides a broad look at these co-diagnosis patterns while demonstrating how standardized veterinary diagnostic data can strengthen swine health surveillance.
Published in Porcine Health Management in 2026, the study, “Macroepidemiologic assessment of swine disease co-occurrences in the United States of America,” analyzed confirmed tissue diagnosis data from the ISU Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory collected between 2020 and 2025. The project was funded through SHIC award 25-068 to investigators Drs. Giovani Trevisan and Daniel Linhares.
Looking beyond single-pathogen diagnoses
The study had two objectives. First, researchers sought to characterize patterns of co-diagnosis in swine and determine how those patterns varied according to anatomic system, animal age, geographic location, and season. Second, they sought to demonstrate that the standardized diagnostic coding system developed at ISU-VDL could be transferred to another veterinary diagnostic laboratory, the Ohio Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory in this case, and incorporated into an animal disease monitoring program. The goal was to establish a foundation for an ongoing multi-institutional database of confirmed tissue diagnoses.
The standardized Dx code system goes beyond simply recording whether a pathogen was detected, for instance by PCR-based assays. The system incorporates the body system affected, type of challenge, lesion or tissue involved, and suspected or confirmed cause. Diagnosticians use information from the broader diagnostic workup, including clinical history, pathology, and laboratory testing, to assign a final standardized code. This creates a more consistent way to examine disease patterns across cases and over time.
More than half of cases involved multiple etiologies
The scale of the resulting datasetenabled the examinationof disease complexity across a large number of confirmed tissue diagnoses. Of 58,170 cases in the database between January 2020 and September 2025, 45,310 met the study’s eligibility criteria and were analyzed.
Of those cases, 23,846 (53%) were classified as co-diagnosis cases, meaning two or more distinct etiologies were identified within a case. Individual co-diagnosis cases included between two and nine distinct etiologies.
The finding demonstrates the frequency with which veterinary diagnostic cases involve more than a single disease agent. It also illustrates why understanding the broader disease context can be important when interpreting diagnostic results.
Wean-to-market pigs accounted for most co-diagnosis cases
The distribution of co-diagnosis cases varied considerably by production phase. Wean-to-market pigs accounted for 77% of all cases in the database but represented 86% of the co-diagnosis cases. Researchers noted that this concentration underscores the vulnerability of pigs during this stage to multifactorial disease processes.
The anatomic distribution also showed a strong respiratory component. The respiratory system was involved in 82% of co-diagnosis cases, followed by systemic disease at 61%, digestive disease at 31%, cardiovascular disease at 22% and nervous system disease at 5%.
Respiratory diagnoses were frequent in beginning of the nursery period and continued through grow-finish, while digestive diagnoses were more prominent earlier in life, particularly before three weeks of age.
PRRSV and Streptococcus suis were prominent in complex cases
As expected, PRRSV and S. suis emerged as particularly important components of co-diagnosed cases. PRRSV appeared in each of the five most common pathogen combinations identified across the database:
Across the individual anatomic systems, the most prevalent combinations also typically involved a bacterial and viral agent, highlighting the frequency with which these two types of challenges occurred together.
Viral and bacterial involvement was associated with greater complexity
Cases involving both bacterial and viral challenges had significantly more distinct etiologies than cases involving neither. In contrast, cases involving bacteria without viruses, or viruses without bacteria, did not show statistically significant increases in the number of distinct etiologies. The researchers also found that accounting for PRRSV and S. suis changed the model estimates by less than 10%, indicating that the primary association was not explained solely by those two prominent pathogens.
Together, these findings reinforce the complexity of disease cases involving both viral and bacterial agents and support the need for diagnostic approaches that consider potential co-infections rather than focusing exclusively on a single pathogen. As an example, practicing veterinarians should consider sending multiple tissues and consider a broad investigation, rather than looking for single pathogens when investigating field cases.
Turning diagnostic data into disease intelligence
The study demonstrates two complementary outcomes of SHIC-supported research. First, it provides a clearer picture of how frequently multiple etiologies occur in confirmed swine disease cases and how those patterns vary across production stages, anatomic systems, seasons, and locations. Second, it demonstrates a framework for turning standardized diagnostic information from individual veterinary diagnostic laboratories into a broader population-health surveillance resource.
This work also provided the first framework for integrating confirmed disease diagnosis data from veterinary diagnostic laboratories, in which two institutions, i.e., ISU VDL and OH VDL, use a standard way to record confirmed disease diagnosis results with the SDRS. The authors conclude that expanding and maintaining this type of data integration could provide a more holistic view of disease occurrence and support earlier recognition of changes in animal health. They also identify opportunities to expand the approach to additional laboratories and potentially other livestock species.
The project demonstrates how consistent interpretation and coding of diagnostic information can help move disease surveillance from individual cases toward a broader understanding of disease complexity and trends—providing information that can support more informed swine health decisions.
The Next Mile brings together industry experts for practical, candid conversations about the National Swine Health Strategy and what its priorities mean for producers.
In the first episode, Dr. Meredith Petersen, director of swine health for the National Pork Board, talks with Dr. Cara Haden, director of animal welfare and biosecurity at Pipestone, about reducing the spread of disease. They discuss the different layers of biosecurity and why leadership and daily culture, not just written protocols, ultimately determine whether biosecurity holds up.
The conversation also leaves room for a little fun, including a gas station sushi confession and some of the career misconceptions veterinarians hear on repeat.
We hope you’ll watch the first episode and help us share it with producers and others across the pork industry through your newsletters, social media channels, and other communications. By sharing these conversations, you can help make the National Swine Health Strategy more familiar, practical, and relevant to the people putting it into action every day.
This month’s Domestic Swine Disease Monitoring Report highlights several key findings: PEDV activity exceeded expected levels in September, with PEDV detections in wean-to-market sites showing a moderate increase for the second consecutive month since July. PRRSV showed a moderate seasonal increase in wean-to-market detections in September. IAV activity increased in both production phases, with a significant spike in tissue-confirmed IAV diagnosis in September. This month’s bonus page highlights current insights on IAV in swine and humans. The accompanying podcast features Dr. Paul Yeske, Swine Vet Center, and Dr. Marisa Rotolo, National Pork Board, discussing PEDV activity trends, transmission risk, and industry efforts toward PEDV elimination.
In this month’s Global Swine Disease Monitoring Report, you can learn about foot-and-mouth disease in Namibia where the first outbreak in its FMD-free zone since 1964 was detected. Livestock trade and international expert activities have been disrupted. FMD serotype A re-emerged in Türkiye, near the Iraqi border, confirming circulation of four serotypes in recent years. African swine fever continued geographic spread in Finland in wild boar. This expanded affected area and intensified economic impacts on Finland’s pork sector are being felt, despite no detections in domestic pigs. ASF also was reported for the first time in Romania’s Buzău County. This was the first commercial pig farm affected in Romania in two years and affected a 5,720-pig enterprise.
PRRS Cumulative Incidence for MSHMP
PEDV Cumulative Incidence for MSHMP
Four PRRSV variants are currently classified as Variants Under Monitoring (VUM) Category 2 or higher this month. Variant 1C.5.32 remains at Category 4 while variants 1A.13.49 and 1C.5 remain Category 3. Variant 1C.2 has been demoted from Category 3 to Category 2. Historical reports for all variants that have reached Category 2 or higher are archived and available for review.