Surveillance and Monitoring Key to Understanding Foreign Animal Disease Movement

The Associate Director of the Swine Health Information Center suggests surveillance and monitoring are key to understanding the movement of foreign animal diseases. The Swine Health Information Center's August domestic and global swine disease monitoring reports have been released as part of its monthly eNewsletter.

SHIC Associate Director Dr. Lisa Becton says Foot and Mouth Disease has been identified in South Africa with 27 cases in five provinces and they're dealing with three different serotypes while in Estonia a case of African Swine Fever was identified in a 17 thousand head commercial herd, the first detection of ASF since 2023, and in Germany ASF has been identified in wild boar in a second district.

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

Surveillance and monitoring is really key for us to be able to understand how these viruses are moving and, while a lot of the status globally may change, it still is important to be able to understand what is occurring and where and that can help us to better understand what are some risk factors and causes for disease spread.

The other key thing is to look at how are other countries identifying and managing these diseases.That way we and that way we can learn from their experiences on how they are handling  the management of these diseases so we can learn what are the risks people are facing. Is it animal movements or illegal meat introductions, is it different transmission of animal-to-animal contact? Understanding these different means of exposure can help producers understand where they need to shore up their biosecurity and monitoring and even with feral pig control. All of these things are very important to understand through our global monitoring process.

The Swine Health Information Center's domestic and global swine disease monitoring reports can be found at swinehealth.org as part of its August eNewsletter.