Rob Langenhorst, technical sales manager at AAF International, spoke to The Pig Site’s Sarah Mikesell at the 2026 World Pork Expo in Des Moines, Iowa, USA about the value of air filtration in swine and poultry barns.
What is AAF’s new product series for animal science?
The BioShield series is specifically designed for production use in pig or poultry. It sets a standard during the production standpoint. During development, they gained an understanding of what the producers require from a filter and what it is that they wanted to get out of it.
The swine and poultry industries have been dealing with the PRRS virus and HPAI for years now. Why is purpose filtration for barn environments taken this long to develop?
Swine has been doing this for 20+ years now. We saw a big increase in the late 2010s in the swine industry moving to full filtration. The PRRS virus has really been the catalyst in this change. It's been drastically evolving and changing over the last five years, and many producers have had to rethink potential PRRS virus locations.
Similar developments are happening on the poultry side. Previously, highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) was more of a typical virus that producers always saw and knew how to deal with. Now these newer strains, much like the new strains of PRRS, are much more virulent. They're not going away.
We're now seeing some changes to production systems, where people are asking, “what type of adapters do I need to use in my production to sustain my economic value?”
This is the first product in the BioShield line. Where does AAF go from here with animal science filtration?
We'll have MERV 15 or 16 in the 12 inch and the 17 inch filter sizing options. This gives us a diverse range of choices for producers, and this is important because not every barn is the same. Not every design is the same, and ventilation systems can vary. Producers can now mix and match what's going to work best for their own system.
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