Activities of the Swine Health Information Center are guided by its annually updated Plan of Work. The 35 projects included in the recently released 2025 Plan of Work address SHIC’s five strategic priorities: 1) improve swine health information, 2) monitor and mitigate risks to swine health, 3) responding to emerging disease, 4) surveillance and discovery of emerging disease, and 5) swine disease matrices. Developed with the input of industry stakeholders, and approved by the SHIC Board of Directors, the 2025 Plan of Work will be implemented by Executive Director Dr. Megan Niederwerder and Associate Director Dr. Lisa Becton with input from the board and SHIC Working Groups.
Find the 10th anniversary 2025 SHIC Plan of Work here.
Proposals to address priorities detailed in the 2025 Plan of Work are accepted through targeted RFPs and on a rolling basis for review and funding recommendation. SHIC’s activities are guided by the Plan of Work while remaining nimble and responsive to industry needs as they arise. Stakeholder input and ideas are welcomed year-round to inform newly identified industry needs which may necessitate adapting the Plan of Work to fulfill SHIC’s mission. In addition to the 2025 Plan of Work priorities, SHIC continues efforts to fill knowledge gaps for H5N1 Risk to Swine through a collaborative research program with FFAR and Pork Checkoff initiated in 2024.
SHIC 2025 Plan of Work Priorities:
Improve Swine Health Information
- Domestic disease monitoring through veterinary diagnostic laboratory data collation.
- Domestic disease monitoring through voluntary reporting to the Morrison Swine Health Monitoring Project.
- Strategic summary of SHIC swine health and disease work-to-date.
- Webinars to inform veterinarians and producers about emerging swine health issues.
- Maintaining up-to-date swine disease fact sheets.
- Ensure timely and valuable communications across all stakeholder audiences.
Monitor and Mitigate Risks to Swine Health
- Real-time assessment of high-risk product importation and traveler entry at borders.
- Global disease monitoring to identify and inform international swine disease risks.
- Foster information sharing with government and allied industry through international animal health organizations.
- Transport biosecurity through targeting a regional or production phase approach.
- Designing effective cleaning and disinfection tools and practices for swine transport trailers.
- Packing plant biocontainment to reduce risk of trailer contamination at the dock.
- Packing plant tools for effective cleaning and disinfection of lairage for business continuity.
- Personnel movement as a risk of disease spread between farms.
- Enhancing biosecurity of mortality management practices to reduce disease transmission back to farm.
- Novel ventilation technologies for cost-effective bioexclusion and biocontainment.
- Cull sow and secondary market biosecurity and disease surveillance.
- Multi-species livestock operations and backyard farms as a risk for emerging disease spillover.
- Role of rendering in emerging disease transmission and response.
Responding to Emerging Disease
- Emergency disease preparedness and response planning in coordination with state, federal and industry stakeholders.
- Monitoring risk of African swine fever recombinant genotype I/II virus to US prevention and preparedness.
- Rapid deployment of research funds for a newly emerging disease.
- Investigating production and swine health impacts of porcine sapovirus as an emerging pathogen.
- Hemorrhagic tracheitis syndrome (HTS) as a potential emerging disease in US swine.
- Utilizing Standardized Outbreak Investigations to identify high risk events for pathogen entry.
- Identification of early disease outbreak warning signals from industry data.
Surveillance and Discovery of Emerging Disease
- Wastewater sampling for emerging disease surveillance.
- Tongue tip fluids as a diagnostic sample to target risk-based mortality populations.
- Genome-based diagnostic technologies for emerging disease detection and forensic analysis.
- Diagnostic fee support to assist in early detection of emerging disease.
- Population and environmental surveillance technologies to improve and automate diagnostic testing.
- Increasing utility of VDL submissions as an effective surveillance stream for detection of emerging disease.
- Investigate the clinical relevance and epidemiology of newly identified agents in VDL submissions associated with swine disease.
Swine Disease Matrix
- Updating bacterial and viral swine disease matrices to prioritize swine pathogens.
- Using the swine bacterial and viral disease matrices as guidelines for research to enhance swine disease diagnostic capabilities.
The Swine Health Information Center, launched in 2015 with Pork Checkoff funding, protects and enhances the health of the US swine herd by minimizing the impact of emerging disease threats through preparedness, coordinated communications, global disease monitoring, analysis of swine health data, and targeted research investments. As a conduit of information and research, SHIC encourages sharing of its publications and research. Forward, reprint, and quote SHIC material freely. For more information, visit http://www.swinehealth.org or contact Dr. Megan Niederwerder at mniederwerder@swinehealth.org or Dr. Lisa Becton at lbecton@swinehealth.org.