Gustavo Machado: Major Enhancement of U.S. Swine Industry Biosecurity

Abstract

Department of Population Health and Pathobiology, College of Veterinary Medicine, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA.

The well-established U.S. Secure Pork Supply (SPS) Plan for Continuity of Business serves as a guideline for enhancing the biosecurity features of swine farms to improve preparedness for outbreaks of foreign animal diseases. Although the role of biosecurity is well understood in preventing disease spread, the U. S. swine industry lacks knowledge of individual farm biosecurity plans and the efficacy of existing biosecurity measures. The Rapid Access Biosecurity (RAB) app (RABapp™) consortium aimed to 1) reduce ambiguity regarding the construction of on-farm enhancement biosecurity plans; 2) provide rapid access to standardized biosecurity plans at a national level; and 3) track movements between farms allows for the ability to efficiently develop disease spread transmission model and transform these models into decision support tools for animal health official and swine industry. As a result, the RABapp™ project was developed by an assembled consortium of the swine industry, government officials,
and academic scholars’ members. This study focuses on demonstrating the steps to enhance the on-farm biosecurity of individual swine farms and implement effective contact tracing by tracking between-farm movement data to help prevent the spread of infection to other farms.

Enhance the on-farm biosecurity

Although SPS plans help swine farms enhance their biosecurity features in preparation for infectious disease outbreaks, updating and accessing these plans in a timely manner before and during an emergency, is critical for swine industry resilience. Here, RABapp™ serves as a vital tool by providing producers, veterinarians, and government officials.

Movement data for animals and related products

The integration of movement data with SPS plans is a unique feature of RABapp™. RABapp™ calculates the transportation network of farms and displays this network within an interactive easy-to-use plot. Utilizing information extracted from SPS plans, RABapp™ also calculates the risk level of individual farms based on each farm’s biosecurity infrastructure and the volume of animals moving through specific sites.

Disease surveillance and transmission models

Thanks to the increasingly broad participation of the swine industry in the RABapp™project, the team has utilized extensive movement and farm location data from swine companies to develop three state-of-the-art transmission models. The first two models enable the reconstruction of weekly outbreaks for two endemic diseases, PRRS and PEDV, while also providing short forecasts. In addition to the PRRS and PEDV models, the third and arguably most critical model is a transmission model for African swine fever (ASF). Tracking the spread of this major infectious disease threat as soon as the first case is detected on U.S. soil is a prominent goal of the RABapp™ project.