Two research projects being conducted in Canada through a Swine Health Information Center partnership with the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research are exploring novel methods for identifying and diagnosing African Swine Fever and for rapidly detecting recombinant strains.Six 12-month projects funded through a Swine Health Information Center co-funding partnership with the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research are underway, including two related to African Swine Fever that are being conducted in Canada.
SHIC Executive Director Dr. Megan Niederwerder says all six projects address research priorities identified through SHIC's plan of work process and are intended to protect and enhance the health of the U.S. swine herd by minimizing the impact of emerging disease threats.
Quote-Dr. Megan Niederwerder-Swine Health Information Center:
These six projects are going to be done by six different principal investigators at three different institutions including the University of Minnesota, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's National Center for Foreign Animal Diseases and the Ohio State University. These investigators are advancing these areas of emerging disease detection and mitigation right now.
I think one of the important characteristics of these six projects are that two are being conducted in Canada at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's National Center for Foreign Animal Disease with two different investigators and I think that's really an advantage when considering North American swine industry prevention, preparedness.
Oftentimes the priorities across the U.S. and Canadian swine sectors are very similar.These two projects are actually looking at novel diagnostic tools for ASF recombinant strains but also using a novel sample type, tongue tips for ASF.As we think about North American prevention and preparedness for African Swine Fever virus, certainly the colleagues and collaboration for the laboratory in Canada provides a significant advantage for both countries.
Details on this work can be found at swinehealth.org.
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Source : Farmscape.ca