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August 2025 SHIC eNewsletter

SHIC, FFAR, and Pork Checkoff Fund 10 H5N1 Risk to Swine Projects to Address Emerging Disease Threat

The Swine Health Information Center, in collaboration with the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research and the Pork Checkoff, has recently funded 10 projects addressing research priorities and topics within its H5N1 Risk to Swine Research Program. Goals of the program are to enhance prevention, preparedness, mitigation, and response capabilities for H5N1 influenza in the US swine herd. The priority areas addressed through the funded projects include vaccine development and cross-protection, clinical presentation of pigs across different production phases, potential for mammary transmission, diagnostic surveillance, introduction and transmission risks, and biosecurity practices. The 10 new projects were initiated in summer 2025 and are 12 to 18 months in duration. Research outcomes from the funded projects will be shared with producers and veterinarians as soon as they become available.

The SHIC/FFAR/NPB H5N1 Risk to Swine Research Program request for proposals was announced on November 6, 2024, and received 51 proposals from 35 different institutions across six countries by the submission deadline of December 31, 2024. Proposals underwent a competitive review process across the first several months of 2025 by subject matter experts on influenza and the swine industry. Funding awarded across the 10 new projects totals $2.1 million of the $4 million total available for this program. Funding timely research is an essential component of SHIC providing project outcomes that drive action for emerging disease prevention, preparedness, mitigation, and response for the US swine industry.

SHIC/FFAR/NPB H5N1 Risk to Swine Research Program projects funded and initiated in response to the RFP include:

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Trending Video

There’s a Whole Barn Buried Under This Field Now

Video: There’s a Whole Barn Buried Under This Field Now

There's old hog barns under that field now. The old hog barn site on the farm has been sitting there for decades, and this is the week it finally came out: concrete pad, burn pile, charred lumber, all of it loaded into a CAT 725C rock truck and buried in a pit we dug back in the timber.

Tork's been waiting his whole life to drive one of these, so he gets the keys to a 50,000 pound rock truck and I ride shotgun. The excavator loads, the dozer clears the timber, the drone shows the whole site from above, and by sundown there's nothing left of the old place but a smooth patch of dirt. It's a weird feeling erasing something that was here before either of us, but the farm has to keep moving.