Early Detection Key to Containing ASF Spread

The Executive Director of the Swine Health Information Center says, if African Swine Fever is detected early enough, it may be possible to contain its spread within an infected barn. The Swine Health Information Center, as part of a 1.7 million dollar USDA Foreign Agricultural Service grant, is working with partners in Vietnam to learn more about African Swine Fever to help the pork sector in that country cope with the infection and be prepared should it enter North America.

 

SHIC Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg says scientists are looking at a variety of different management strategies in Vietnam.

 

 

One of the things, for example, that we will be looking at as a researchable question, not just from a management issue, but to learn more detail about its use and how to correctly use is a technique that's called tooth extraction if you will.

 

It is hopefully early identification of infection either in pens or individual stalls, gestation stalls especially, and we may be able to look at pens in Vietnam as well. If you can identify the infection quickly either in an animal or in a pen and remove that animal, while at the same time you remove animals on either side of that infected one, you may be able to stop the spread of the virus within that barn.

 

African Swine Fever transmits between pigs at a relatively slow although steady and continual rate. So we may have an opportunity to intercede and to interject some control in that transmission and maybe stop it within a barn.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.