I recently attended a meeting involving a recap of the national African swine fever exercise held a few weeks ago. USDA was describing the involvement of the diagnosticians at the Plum Island Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory during the exercise noting that they substituted fruits for various tissues to simulate sample submissions. When queried further, USDA justified the substitutions by relating that, "as we all know, prunes are the most spleen-like of the fruits." At first it seemed odd, but in retrospect, I think substituting fruits for tissues seems perfectly acceptable in an animal disease lab named "Plum."