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Partnership Helps Minimize Emerging Swine Disease Threats

Swine Health Information Center Executive Director Megan Niederwerder, Associate Director Lisa Becton, and Board Chair Mark Schwartz were guests of the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) for a recent webinar. “Minimizing the Impact of Emerging Disease Threats in Swine through Research Funding Partnerships” illustrated SHIC and FFAR’s successful collaborations to date and was part of FFAR’s 10th anniversary celebration webinar series.

The webinar was hosted by FFAR’s Jasmine Bruno, scientific program director, who manages their animal systems portfolio within FFAR’s Thriving Productions Systems team. She shared how FFAR’s portfolio maintains a focus on developing animal agriculture partnerships with entities like SHIC to address emerging disease threats in livestock.

“FFAR was established in the 2014 Farm Bill to connect funders, researchers, and farmers together to pioneer the next frontier of agriculture research, including developing science-based solutions to improve animal health and welfare, advance environmental sustainability, bolster producer profitability and sustain our food supply,” she explained.

FFAR continues to build these collaborative partnerships to support research to address these and other challenges facing food and agriculture today. In this process, FFAR looks to complement USDA’s research agenda, identifying where there are critical knowledge and funding gaps.

This effort involves FFAR integrating producers along with other agricultural stakeholders to increase public agriculture research investment. “For every federal dollar that we spend, we have to match that with at least one non-federal dollar, amplifying the public’s investment in agriculture,” Bruno stated. “We really focus on actionable science.”

Bruno said SHIC has been an invaluable partner in working with FFAR and informing them when there are critical swine health needs. Collaboration between SHIC, FFAR, and NPB allows for leveraging producer dollars with federal funds to increase overall research funding. Together, the organizations expand the scientific network of researchers working on swine diseases while ensuring research is producer-driven and addresses industry needs. Ultimately, the partnership facilitates the transition of research findings into actionable changes for producers.

Niederwerder thanked FFAR for their partnership, stating SHIC’s board of directors and working groups, along with U.S. pork producers, are grateful for their collaboration. SHIC’s mission is to protect and enhance the health of the U.S. swine herd by minimizing the impact of emerging disease threats. Niederwerder shared how SHIC does this through various mechanisms such as a coordinated communication strategy, preparedness activities, looking at both global and domestic disease monitoring, and analysis of swine health data. This information is then used to target research investments that will provide the greatest value back to pork producers.

One partnership between SHIC and FFAR resulted in a research program focused on Japanese encephalitis virus.

“We received an outstanding response from this RFP with 26 research proposals across 23 different institutions,” Niederwerder commented. “Overall, there was $1.3 million awarded through this program across six projects, and those six projects will address research needs and priorities to prevent and prepare for Japanese encephalitis virus, of which the US is currently negative.”

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