Swine Health Information Center Updated Diagnostic Assay Catalog Released

Jan 24, 2022

The Swine Health Information Center has released its updated Diagnostic Assay Catalog. Developed for swine diagnosticians, the Swine Health Information Center Diagnostic Assay Catalog contains information on diagnostic tests developed to support the early identification and epidemiological investigation of possible emerging disease pathogens and how to access these tests.

SHIC Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg explains the catalog provides pertinent information about the tests and summarizes research behind them including technical background information.

Clip-Dr. Paul Sundberg-Swine Health Information Center:

The center has done a lot of research, a lot of support for different research to make sure that we have diagnostic tools available for things that wouldn't otherwise be available and the catalog is a compilation of those tools.

It gives the diagnosticians in the different veterinary diagnostic labs a one stop resource for the different tools that are available, whether they be ELISAs to detect antibodies or PCRs to detect antigens, it gives a catalog of who they can contact for a specific test if they suspect something new, something different and also some details about the specificity of those tests themselves.

It gives details about the test itself as well as contacts for people to be able to access those. What we've done is we've focussed on who has the diagnostic test and make sure that the other diagnostic labs know that they can go to that as a resource for that diagnostic test if they suspect that they have something that they want to look farther and deeper into.

Source : Farmscape

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.