Pork Sector Stakeholders Encouraged to Review SHIC 2022 Plan of Work

Feb 21, 2022

The Swine Health Information Center is encouraging pork sector stakeholders to review its just released 2022 plan of work. Launched in 2015, the Swine Health Information Center is charged with co-ordinating domestic and global swine disease monitoring, facilitating swine disease research and distributing critical information to pork sector stakeholders. As part of its February enewsletter, the center has released its 2022 Plan of Work.

SHIC Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg explains the plan is compiled with broad pork sector input and oversight.

Clip-Dr. Paul Sundberg-Swine Health Information Center:

I gather as much information from as many different sources as I can. I ask them all essentially about the same questions, what do we need to accomplish in the next 12 months, what are the biggest issues that you have now and how can we help you with emerging diseases. I talk to individuals, I talk to companies, I talk to individual veterinarians and pork producers, I talk to veterinary diagnostic labs, veterinary researchers, USDA, state animal health officials, as wide a variety of input as I can get.

Then I pass that collection on to working groups, the monitoring and analysis working group and the preparedness and response working group that I have that advise the direction for the center. Then the final filter for our plan of work is the Swine Health Information Center's Board of Directors.

They just met the last week in January and they went through all of the information that was gathered and they're the ones that set the plan of work with the associated budget to that, taking some things out, adding some things, changing some things in there with their look of how they help give the Swine Health Information Center program the direction and the philosophy we need to have in order to help the pork industry.

Source : Farmscape

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

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Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.