SHIC-Funded MSHMP Year Seven Goals to Expand Participation and Capacity

December 22, 2021 — Paul Sundberg

The Morrison Swine Health Monitoring Project (MSHMP) is entering year seven with plans to build capacity. MSHMP will carry on monitoring swine disease incidence with a national system in place for emerging pathogen detection, a key element of the Swine Health Information Center's (SHIC's) mission. Pig farm population growth, emerging pathogen tool finetuning, transport data usability and platform building for project information sharing are all key areas of action.

MSHMP maintains the following overarching objectives:

1. Monitor trends in pathogen incidence and prevalence.
2. Conduct prospective monitoring of PRRS virus sequence evolution and impact.
3. Develop capacity to capture and analyze movement data.
4. Expand participation of producers to allow for all the opportunity of access to timely detailed information on disease occurrence and streamline public access to information relevant to the industry.

As in previous years, MSHMP's commitment to the US swine industry will remain the collection, analysis and report generation and sharing of disease occurrence metrics. This ongoing process has allowed MSHMP to conduct complementary projects, share data with producers on a more granular level contributing to further understanding trends in the nation, but most importantly, stimulate cooperation among producers and practitioners. An example of this was the recent emergence of the new porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) variant that rapidly evolved. Without the MSHMP platform metrics, the epidemiologic curve and maps could not have been generated and shared with the US industry.

In year seven, MSHMP is proposing several new projects within each overarching goal. All newly proposed projects have evolved from conversations with participants with the goal of making them applicable for a foreign animal disease emergency.

• Goal 1: Begin exploring data pathways to quantify and characterize the occurrence of disease in the growing pig herd population.
• Goal 2: Develop a methodology to identify new PRRSv strains circulating as part of a cluster through frequency and similarity.

• Goal 3: Create and characterize the dissemination network patterns through pig movement of the newly emerged PRRSv lineage 1-4-4 1C in a production system and assess regional risk of these newly placed pigs.
• Goal 4: Develop and launch the first publicly available MSHMP website to optimize project output dissemination within both the participant and industry communities.

The MSHMP team will continue to deliver practical knowledge in a timely fashion to help producers prevent and manage swine diseases. Through MSHMP, participation and sharing of diagnostic information in the interests of the producer and the industry is encouraged.

Aside from capacity building, MSHMP proposes to create value through conducting practical, short-term research on diseases important to the industry. This will include monitoring the incidence and prevalence of PRRS virus, PEDV, and potentially other important pathogens. MSHMP will use the diagnostic results in conjunction with management information and interventions to publish ways for producers to limit the impact of important swine diseases. And by adding phylogenetic information to the data routinely collected by MSHMP, the project will contribute to producer capabilities to early identify, interpret, and react to PRRS outbreaks, new virus incursions, and changes in risk at both system and regional levels. This work will help answer one of the most important PRRS research questions related to virus evolution, emergence, and transmission at the regional and system levels, while at the same time preparing the basic tools needed for a rapid response in the face of an FAD.

This proposed project will create value in three ways. MSHMP encourages and entices producers to participate in a voluntary, producer-led disease control program. The project creates the infrastructure to monitor, detect and inform producers about emerging pathogens in the country, a SHIC mission priority.

SHIC, launched by the National Pork Board in 2015 solely with Pork Checkoff funding, continues to focus efforts on prevention, preparedness, and response to novel and emerging swine disease for the benefit of US swine health. As a conduit of information and research, SHIC encourages sharing of its publications and research. Forward, reprint, and quote SHIC material freely. SHIC is funded by America's pork producers to fulfill its mission to protect and enhance the health of the US swine herd. For more information, visit http://www.swinehealth.org or contact Dr. Sundberg at psundberg@swinehealth.org.

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Paul Sundberg, Executive Director, Swine Health Information Center