The Swine Health Information Center, along with the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research and Pork Checkoff, joined together to fund and launch a two-year Wean-to-Harvest Biosecurity Research Program in the summer of 2022. In October 2022, a call for research proposals was announced with the goal of investigating cost-effective, innovative technologies, protocols, or ideas to enhance biosecurity during the wean-to-harvest phases of production. By the submission deadline of December 16, 2022, significant interest in the Program resulted in SHIC receiving 41 proposal submissions. Review is now underway.
The Wean-to-Harvest Biosecurity Program proposals received by SHIC, coming from private companies as well as universities in the US and around the world, cover a diverse set of research priorities with a range of time and cost requirements for completion, all with the goal of addressing an identified vulnerability to swine health. Proposals are currently under review by two industry-wide task forces formed by SHIC – one for site-oriented projects and the other for transportation-related work.
The goals of the task forces reviews are to be objective, credible and transparent with their process for proposal selection. The task forces will evaluate proposals’ overall value to the pork industry, likelihood of achieving objectives, experimental design including health and economic outcome effectiveness, as well as justification for cost and time. The SHIC Board of Directors along with FFAR and National Pork Board representatives will review task force recommendations and make the final decision on funding selections in January 2023. The anticipated timeline for funding awards and research project commencement is February 2023. SHIC will report research results providing value and information back to the swine industry as soon as they become available.
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