The Swine Health Information Center reports a positive response to its Standardized Outbreak Investigation Program. The Swine Health Information Center's Standardized Outbreak Investigation Program allows swine producers and veterinarians to report disease outbreaks on farm in a standardised manner.An article circulated through SHIC's January eNewsletter examines lessons learned from the program.
Swine Health Information Center Associate Director Dr. Lisa Becton explains the program, which was started in 2021, was endorsed by the American Association of Swine Veterinarians in 2023 and a web-based platform was introduced in 2024 to increase the usability of the program.
Quote-Dr. Lisa Becton-Swine Health Information Center:
This program covers all aspects of herd demographics as well as collection of outbreak information that leads to a hazard analysis when trying to asses different biosecurity concerns on a farm post outbreak. Performing an investigation after a farm has experienced an outbreak is important not only at an individual farm level but also for a system or at an industry level because the information that can be learned can be aggregated when we utilize a standardized format and so you can compare and contrast outbreaks to identify what are areas of consistency when we look at risks for farms breaking.
But we can also see what are things that are unique to farms and help those individual farms be better prepared in the future and strengthen their biosecurity. The response has been very good for both the web-based application as well as utilization of a written form or paper-based format, also available at the web site. Veterinarians do recognise that this does provide a very usable tool to be able to investigate an outbreak on our farm for any particular reason.
Details on the standardized Outbreak Investigation Program can be accessed through SHIC's January eNewsletter and a link to the Standardised Outbreak Investigation tool can be found at swinehealth.org.
Source : Farmscape.ca