The Swine Health Information Center has renewed funding for the Domestic Swine Disease Monitoring Report through September 2026. Leading the project are Drs. Giovani Trevisan and Daniel Linhares at Iowa State University. Since 2017, SHIC has funded the reports under the Swine Disease Reporting System initiative, focusing on the analysis and reporting of collated veterinary diagnostic laboratory data to identify emerging endemic disease trends. Reports provide producers with an early warning system to prompt preventative actions such as increasing herd surveillance and heightening biosecurity or biocontainment measures. SDRS is the largest publicly available source of swine health information from six US veterinary diagnostic labs and represents >97% of all swine samples submitted for testing. Reported data includes activity of nine pathogens across all age groups, production phases and sample types.
The annual report highlighting activities and accomplishments of the Project from October 2024 – September 2025 can be found as SHIC project #24-098 here.
SDRS continues to provide real-time, science-based information on endemic and emerging pathogens, supporting early detection and disease management efforts to benefit the US swine herd. Continuously updated metadata includes site state, date of receipt, farm type, pig age, and PCR test results for several endemic swine pathogens, namely PRRSV-1, PRRSV-2, PEDV, PDCoV, TGEV, M. hyopneumoniae, PCV2, PCV3, Escherichia coli, and IAV. Additional PRRSV ORF5 sequencing information, organized by lineage, variant, and RFLP, with a feature to search and compare a provided sequence, is also available.
Data includes pathogen activity across all age groups, from boar studs to breeding herds to grow-finish pigs, and a wide variety of specimens, including biological, feed, and truck/environmental samples. The six participating laboratories are ISU-VDL, UMN-VDL, SDSU-ADRDL, KS-VDL, OH ADDL, and Purdue ADDL. SDRS pathogen monitoring supports programs such as the PEDV Elimination Task Force and providing information for the US SHIP program.
In the last year, a major update to SDRS included implementing a new PRRSV ORF5 variant and PRRSV-1 lineage classification system in the dashboards and the PRRSV BLAST tool. Adding a PRRSV variant and lineage classification in the online dashboards aids in epidemiological investigations and enables monitoring of emerging new variants, such as the 1C.5.32 that started to have clonal expansion in 2024. Educational material to help interpret the new PRRSV ORF5 sequence data was published on the SDRS YouTube channel. In addition, revamped SDRS state-level monitoring and PRRSV ORF5 sequence dashboards were updated on the SDRS website. State-level monitoring was updated through the development of an internal analytical tool to analyze state-level changes, providing producers and veterinarians with increased granularity of PRRS distribution. Leveraging SHIC funding, this work was developed in partnership with a USDA funded project.
A new PEDV facility category was also introduced last year to monitor PEDV PCR activity across truck washes, packing plants, and vehicles. This addition provides information about the positivity of PCR submissions coming from these facilities. This data helps producers and veterinarians understand PEDV detection dynamics outside of the farm during transport and harvest, raising alerts for enhanced biosecurity when PEDV activity is high in the facility category.
A new SDRS survey was created and is available on the SDRS website to allow stakeholders to provide input about potential ideas for continued SDRS improvements and expansions. This new tool enables anonymous suggestions to be offered to the SDRS team, creating a new channel for feedback from the industry to suggest SDRS changes, in addition to the SDRS Advisory Council.
From October 2024 to September 2025, 12 monthly PDF and audio reports were disseminated within the SHIC newsletter, summarizing diagnostic results from the six participating laboratories. These reports were also distributed via email to 686 subscribers from 236 organizations, a 44% increase from the previous year, and reached 21 countries. Video summaries on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram accumulated over 67,000 views.
SDRS continues to provide high-value disease surveillance reports through integrating, monitoring and sharing information regarding emerging and re-emerging swine health threats. Renewal of the program will allow SDRS to continue to enhance domestic swine disease monitoring, inform pathogen elimination programs, support informed decision-making, and help protect the health and productivity of the US swine herd. SHIC support is also contributing to a path for SDRS to actively train the next generation of animal health professionals on surveillance approaches. During 2025, an MBA, MS, and PhD student aquired their degrees working with the SDRS while another PhD student used SDRS content in one of their PhD chapters.
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. As a conduit of information and research, SHIC encourages sharing of its publications and research. Forward, reprint, and quote SHIC material freely. For more information, visit http://www.swinehealth.org or contact Dr. Megan Niederwerder at [email protected] or Dr. Lisa Becton at [email protected].