SHIC Domestic Swine Disease Monitoring Expanded and Extended

Dec 31, 2024

The Swine Health Information Center has added E. coli monitoring to its monthly Domestic Swine Disease Monitoring Report and extended its commitment to the report through September 2025.

The Swine Health Information Center's Domestic Swine Disease Monitoring Report provides a monthly update on what's going on with diseases being tracked in the field across the United States. SHIC Associate Director Dr. Lisa Becton says the information contained in the report originates from six veterinary diagnostic laboratories, accounting for approximately 96 percent of all cases submitted in the U.S.

Quote-Dr. Lisa Becton-Swine Health Information Center:

This project is run by Drs. Giovani Trevisan and Daniel Linhares out of Iowa State University. They work with six different veterinary diagnostic laboratories to collect PCR data information and case results across all of the swine samples submitted.

Any time that a swine veterinary sample is submitted to the six participating laboratories, that information then gets funnelled into one system and then reported out to all producers and veterinarians on an aggregate basis.
This report does have a wide range of users and stakeholders however predominantly is looked at from producers and their herd veterinarians because they'll utilize this information make herd decisions, to understand what risks are occurring in different regions, especially if people are shipping animals across state lines or to other areas of the country.

Really it does help producers and their veterinarians make decision on biosecurity, on animal movements, even looking at treatment and vaccination strategies as they move animals into other systems. Again, the goal is to reduce the impact of diseases that are seen and to have a rapid way to identify if there are significant changes in emerging trends that are being seen for different diseases.

Dr. Becton suggests information contained in the Domestic Swine Disease Monitoring Report is critical to understanding what is the current status of a disease, where is it occurring, in what ages groups and what types of samples being submitted, be they oral fluids or other tissue samples?
To access the reports, visit swinehealth.org.

Source : Farmscape.ca

Video: Understanding the Basics of the Renewable Fuel Standard

On Friday, April 24, 2026, from 12 noon–1:00 ET, the Penn State Center for Agricultural and Shale Law, alongside the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture’s (PDA) Agricultural Business Development Center (ABDC), presented this webinar in the Understanding Agricultural Law Educational Series, a course designed to develop subject matter literacy and competence on fundamental issues of agricultural law for attorneys and business advisors who work with or represent agricultural or rural clients but may not necessarily specialize in agricultural law:

“Understanding the Basics of the Renewable Fuel Standard”

The Clean Air Act’s Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program requires transportation fuel sold in the United States to contain a minimum volume of renewable fuels such as ethanol, biodiesel, or advanced biofuels. Established by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and later expanded by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, the RFS is implemented by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in collaboration with the Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

This webinar provides an overview of the legal authority and structure for the RFS program and explain how it works, including the program’s system of Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) and categories of renewable fuels. Additionally, this webinar addresses EPA annual volume requirement rulemaking and associated recent legal issues.