REGIONAL DISEASE WARNING TOOL RESULTS FROM SHIC FUNDING

May 29, 2023

A SHIC-funded effort aimed at increasing swine disease awareness, prevention, and preparedness, The Early Regional Occurrence Warning project, was launched by Drs. Xiaomei Yue and Mariana Kikuti with the Morrison Swine Health Monitoring Project in September 2022. On May 9, 2023, the first TEROW report was sent to participants and will be released weekly. Through the TEROW report, participants are notified if a swine disease is occurring in the region surrounding their sites and are alerted if regional disease occurrence is increasing. MSHMP’s primary mission, capturing and analyzing swine health data on a weekly basis from participating farms, makes TEROW possible. TEROW remains open for participation. Producers and practitioners who would like to better understand regional disease occurrence are encouraged to contact MSHMP by emailing Dr. Cesar Corzo at corzo@umn.edu to learn more about enrollment.

The MSHMP team began program development by 1) calculating the distance between the TEROW participating site(s) and neighboring site(s) recently reporting a PRRS outbreak on a weekly basis; 2) automating the generation of a reporting radius that balances the epidemiological relevance and confidentiality, enabling timely disease prevention measures while preserving confidentiality; and 3) automating the generation and delivery of individualized reports to specific participant email addresses, reducing manual errors.

In March and April 2023, the MSHMP team engaged with TEROW participants individually to assess program development progress, asking whether they agreed with the report outline and content. This process resulted in discussions regarding the reporting radius, site information listed, obtaining feedback, and any concerns participants raised ahead of the first TEROW report distribution in May.

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

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.