Farmscape for December 17, 2025

Twelve new research projects being conducted by investigators at three institutions are helping advance the Swine Health Information Center's main research objectives.
The Swine Health Information Center has released details on 12 new projects that will address research priorities and topics outlined in its 2025 Plan of Work.
The 12 projects are being funded by the Swine Health Information Center through producer funds received from the Pork Checkoff and were launched this fall.
SHIC Executive Director Dr. Megan Niederwerder says the work is being conducted by nine investigators across three institutions including Iowa State University, the University of Minnesota and Epi-Insight.

Quote-Dr. Megan Niederwerder-Swine Health Information Center:
These funded research projects span across all five of our strategic pillars, including improving swine health information, monitoring and mitigating risks to swine health, responding to emerging diseases, enhancing surveillance and discovery of emerging diseases and our swine disease matrices, which are used to prioritize highest risk diseases to the U.S. industry.
These newly funded projects help address the SHIC research priorities that were identified throughout the year through producer, veterinarian and researcher listening sessions and prioritization.
They help us with enhanced monitoring of swine diseases, mitigation strategies for emerging disease preparedness and response, novel biosecurity practices and strategies for reducing disease risk on farm and through transportation, development of new diagnostic assays that will help us identify emerging diseases quicker, utilizing whole genome sequencing as a forensic diagnostic tool to understand how diseases are moving throughout the industry, understanding the clinical relevance of pathogens that may come through the veterinary diagnostic laboratories and investigating their impact on farm, and then updating our swine disease matrices with all of the latest information regarding swine diseases that may be an emerging threat.

Dr. Niederwerder says the projects are expected to be completed by the fall of 2026 or shortly thereafter but results will be shared with producers and veterinarians as they become available.
Full details can be accessed at swinehealth.org.
For more visit Farmscape.Ca.
Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is produced on behalf of North America’s pork producers