Farmscape for August 29, 2017

The creation of a near real-time monitoring system for swine diseases around the world promises to improve the ability of swine health officials to respond to emerging diseases that could threaten the U.S. swine herd.
The Swine Health Information Center in partnership with the University of Minnesota and USDA/APHIS Center for Epidemiology and Animal Health is developing a near real-time monitoring system for swine diseases around the world.
Swine Health Information Center Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg says information will be tracked in a variety of ways.

Clip-Dr. Paul Sundberg-Swine Health Information Center:
There is what we term as soft information.
That might be no more than a rumor or personal communications from a veterinarian to another veterinarian or a producer to another producer.
It might be a newspaper article talking about a disease in another country.
We're going to be monitoring those types of information streams so we can see what the chatter is out around the world.
That's one piece.
The second piece is more hard information, information that is shared publicly from one country to another.
For example the OIE, the international organization for animal health, requires that members around the world notify them when they have an outbreak of certain diseases.
We're going to use those types official notifications along with that soft information and personal communication, put that together and develop a report that will be reviewed by swine health experts along with the Center for Epidemiology and Animal Health and they'll end up looking at the information that they have, maybe contact people in the country for some follow-up information and form a consensus on the importance of the change in the situation as it applies to risk in the U.S.

Dr. Sundberg expects the first reports in four to six months.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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