More than 80 Global Swine Disease Monitoring Reports have been developed since 2017 by a team at the University of Minnesota, now led by Dr. Maria Sol Perez Aguirreburualde. The goal of these reports is to identify risks and raise awareness to support the decision-making process around current prevention and mitigation strategies for emerging disease introduction in the U.S.
As part of the Swine Health Information Center’s (SHIC) mission to identify emerging disease threats, these monthly reports serve as a frequently accessed resource for the swine industry on the SHIC website.
Not only are the reports built with near real-time global surveillance of swine diseases for their content, but they also rely on a network of global collaborators to expand and verify regional information. Renewal of the Global Swine Disease Monitoring Reports means the program will continue and expand in 2024 with a new online dashboard to display the global distribution of priority swine diseases in near real-time, SHIC reports.
“The U.S. swine industry is vulnerable to the introduction of emerging pathogens and routine swine disease monitoring provides early warnings of global disease challenges that could negatively impact swine producers,” SHIC says. “Global Swine Disease Monitoring Report (GSDMR) staff strive to continuously improve the model through developing private-public-academic partnerships to support near real time identification of hazards.”
The GSDMR uses a continually updated procedure of screening to identify and score swine disease related events that may represent a risk for the U.S. swine industry and reports those results on a monthly basis, SHIC explains. Both official and unofficial information sources from primary or secondary platforms are collected, reviewed, organized by disease and organized by geographical region. Following this, a technical team synthesizes and frames each disease section. This facilitates its interpretation by the audience reviewing the GSDMR.
Following a multi-step review phase in which data and information is verified, edited, and/or expanded, in collaboration with key technical informants and a network of U.S. and international stakeholders, a report describing the surveillance outcome is generated.
“In extraordinary circumstances in which a rapid response is indicated, an immediate release of health event data is developed for rapid sharing with the pork industry (e.g., the first African swine fever outbreak in China, first ASF outbreak in Belgium, first classical swine fever outbreak in Japan in 25 years),” SHIC reports.
From November 2022 through April 2024, 17 GSDMRs were produced, highlighting the continuous expansion of ASF in Asia, Europe and Latin America. In addition, the three USDA-classified tier 1 reportable foreign animal diseases of swine (ASF, CSF and foot-and-mouth disease) are included in the report. SHIC notes that additional swine diseases listed in the SHIC disease matrices, such as influenza and pseudorabies, are also included when appropriate after considering the epidemiological context of the event.
In 2023, a new section was incorporated into the reports to provide specific regional disease information for swine industry stakeholders. In this feature, entitled “Focus on,” comprehensive snapshots of current knowledge of swine infectious diseases throughout regions were delivered quarterly, SHIC reports. This section focused on countries with emergent or consolidated pig production sectors.
“Feature goals were to build a temporal and spatial context regarding the dynamic changes of swine infectious diseases to support the understanding of point-in-time changes captured in the monthly report. Additionally, this new feature creates awareness of the risk dynamic to the U.S. swine herd. A credible and consistent source of robust information is a crucial element for disease prioritization and for the development of risk-based preventive strategies to protect the swine industry,” SHIC says.
