Transport Biosecurity Research Expected to Lead to Disease Movement Mitigation Strategies

Research being conducted by North Carolina State University is expected to assist in the development of strategies to reduce the movement of disease-causing pathogens from farm to farm.

As part of research funded by the Swine Health Information Center, North Carolina State University is assessing the risk of disease transmission associated with swine transport vehicles.

SHIC Associate Director Dr. Megan Niederwerder explains researchers have developed a computer modeling technique to track vehicle movements from farm to farm, from the farm to the truck wash and back to the farm.

Clip-Dr. Megan Niederwerder-Swine Health Information Center:

When you think about those vehicles moving from farm to farm you can think about aspects of transport biosecurity which may improve biosecurity between farms should a vehicle need to visit multiple farms.

You can think about truck washes at the forefront to our minds. We can also think about car washes as these vehicles also transport personnel and workers between one farm to the next.

We can think about what are the PPE biosecurity protocols that we can put in place for not only the drivers of the vehicles but is there anything that we can do to the vehicles themselves, whether that be down time, washing, reducing the frequency of visits, going from high biosecurity farms or high health farms to lower biosecurity or those farms that we know are infected with certain pathogens.

So, there's certainly mitigation strategies that we can take into play once we fully understand what this true network is between farms and between washing stations which each of these vehicles.

Dr. Niederwerder expects the project to be completed by May at which time a full report, including mitigation strategies to reduce the risks, will be released. Details on the project can be found at swinehealth.org.