Center for Animal Health and Food Safety has partnered with the University of Minnesota Swine Group and the Swine Health Information Center (SHIC) to develop and implement a system for near real time global surveillance of swine diseases.
Current monthly report
July 6 – August 3, 2021
Report highlights
- ASF in the Americas: the first report of the disease after 40 years was confirmed by the USDA in samples originated from the Dominican Republic.
- First cases of ASF in German pig farms: three outbreaks were detected in Brandenburg state close to the border with Poland.
- Spike in ASF cases in Poland: authorities reported an increase of 520% in ASF outbreaks in domestic pigs compared to the first five months of the year.
About the swine disease surveillance project
The US pork industry remains vulnerable to the introduction of a variety of foreign animal and production diseases. The Swine Health Information Center (SHIC) recognized the importance of developing systems to provide international situational awareness in near-real time for these pathogens, and funded a near real-time swine disease global surveillance project to collect and disseminate this information.
The project has tracked the expansion of African swine fever (ASF) through Asia and Europe, and a new “Focus on…” section raises awareness about specific international swine disease risks. Launched in December 2017, more than 50 reports have contributed valuable data to industry stakeholders as diseases such as ASF, classical swine fever (CSF), and foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) have impacted other countries.
To create the reports, the team at the University of Minnesota has developed a private-public-academic partnership to support a system for near real-time identification of hazards that will contribute to the mission of assessing risks to the industry. Identified hazards are scored using a step-wise procedure of screening, to identify emerging infectious diseases that, potentially, may represent a risk for the US swine industry. A combination of soft and official data is actively and passively collected then organized.