Research has shown soybean products provide an environment that stabilizes viruses, not only the deadly African swine fever (ASF) virus, but also other viruses of importance to the U.S. swine industry.
A $650,000 USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant will allow the Swine Health Information Center (SHIC) to embark on a four-year project designed to reduce the risk of imported feed ingredients, specifically defining the stability of ASF virus in soybean products commonly imported into the U.S. for complete feed diets as well as improve diagnostic capabilities and surveillance tools for the detection of ASF virus in contaminated soybean products and complete feed.
“SHIC has been at the forefront of helping to lead and fund projects geared towards the generation of knowledge for the risk and mitigation of feed as a potential route for the introduction of ASF virus and any other foreign animal disease,” says Megan Niederwerder, SHIC associate director and director of this research project. “The knowledge generated thus far has supported mitigation strategies, but SHIC wants to continue to define best practices for preventing ASF from entering the country through this route.”
Previous research confirms the major risk soybean products imported from ASF-infected countries present to the U.S. swine herd. Niederwerder noted the transboundary research model looking at shipment conditions and the work done on environmental storage conditions demonstrating higher virus’ stability in the soybean products as compared to other feed ingredients and even complete feed.
“This project will help to define the relative risk of soybean products commonly imported into the U.S. for use in swine diets. Adding to historical work on conventional soybean meal, we’ll evaluate organic soybeans and soy oil cake because they’re imported at high levels from ASF-infected countries,” she explains. “Do those other soybean products commonly imported also provide a similar stabilizing matrix for ASFV or can we rank the products based on relative risk? Can we identify the highest risk soybean product to focus our mitigation strategies, thinking that will provide us with the best return on investment for prevention of entry?”
Don’t Forget Feed in Your Biosecurity Plan
Conversations around biosecurity often focus on the pig, personnel and equipment. But Niederwerder urges the industry to consider the critical component of feed biosecurity.
“This research will help us rank those soybean products to identify highest and lowest risk. We’ll help producers and veterinarians direct mitigation strategies to the highest risk, looking at different environmental storage temperatures. Hopefully we can develop protocols and strategies that will provide the greatest return for prevention of entry through these feed ingredients,” Niederwerder says.
The second part of the project will investigate additional diagnostic tools to accurately and consistently screen or perform diagnostic assays on feed imports to confirm a lack of virus contamination.
“Despite the evidence implicating feed as a risk for transboundary spread of ASFV, diagnostic tools for surveillance and detection of virus contamination in bulk feed and ingredients remains an industry challenge. One aim of this project is to investigate and validate protocols for feed testing, such as standardizing sample collection and determining the limit of detection across soybean products and soybean-based feed,” she points out.
Purpose is Clear
Niederwerder says the “why” behind this project is simple.
“It goes back to the mission of SHIC, which is to monitor global diseases, analyze swine health data, and then target research efforts that will prevent and of course, prepare the U.S. swine herd for any emerging diseases and ASF is one of those primary emerging diseases in the world,” she adds.
Editor’s Note: SHIC has awarded the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate a funded Cooperative Research and Development Agreement to complete the research objectives. This work is supported by A1181 Agricultural Biosecurity grant no. 2022-67015-38576/project accession no. 1029316 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the USDA.
