Farmscape for February 5, 2025

The Associate Director of the Swine Health Information Center says, as swine disease diagnostics have evolved, so has the Domestic Swine Disease Monitoring Report.
Launched in 2017 and recently renewed for another year, the Swine Health Information Center's Domestic Swine Disease Monitoring Reports provide a monthly summary of data collected from six U.S. veterinary diagnostic labs, accounting for over 96 percent of all swine samples submitted for testing through the National Animal Health Laboratory Network.
The evolution of the monthly report is chronicled in SHIC's January eNewsletter.
SHIC Associate Director Dr. Lisa Becton says these reports provide an early warning system.

Quote-Dr. Lisa Becton-Swine Health Information Center:
These reports really are invaluable.
A lot of times they're used when veterinarians and their producers are looking, especially at disease elimination plans such as PED or even when they're looking at how do they reduce risks in their area?
Our industry is ever changing and evolving and swine health also changes and evolves.
When we assess the swine disease reporting system, it has tried to take the changes and the needs of the industry into account when surveying for different diseases.
For example, PRRS still remains one of the largest and most impactful diseases and monitoring of PRRS over time has changed, not just from PCR results but now looking at different sequencing, looking at different regional data and other seasonal data to get a bigger and broader picture over time of what's happening in swine health for PRRS virus.
That's just one example.
The system has evolved to meet different disease challenges and needs.
Along with that there's an advisory group that helps to identify additional points that might add value to the reporting as well as SDRS staff reaching out through public surveys to help also identify potential areas that need to be evaluated for inclusion in the program.

Dr. Becton notes details on the Domestic Swine Disease Monitoring program and historical data compiled through it can be found at swinehealth.org.
For more visit Farmscape.Ca.
Bruce Cochrane.

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