animal movement – Swine in Minnesota

Temporal stability of swine movement networks in the U.S.

This is our Friday rubric: every week a new Science Page from the Bob Morrison’s Swine Health Monitoring Project. The previous editions of the science page are available on our website.

This week, Dr. Dennis Makau from the VanderWaal lab is sharing a project on the importance of swine movement to identify farms with a high risk of disease outbreak.

Key Points

Animal movement is a key factor in the U.S. swine industry and is an important risk factor for disease transmission
Animal movement data combined with social network analysis can inform risk-based surveillance and control
Using production system movement data, it was possible to identify the time window of data needed to gauge connectivity and identify high-risk and high-spread farms
Using previous data up to two years old is still better than choosing randomly implemented interventions to manage disease spread, especially in cases of outbreaks transmitted via animal movements

Temporal stability of swine movement networks in the U.S.

Efficient and highly effective control of infectious diseases can be achieved by targeting interventions towards farms that are highly connected “super-spreaders” in animal movement networks. However, from an implementation standpoint, it is unclear how much movement data is required to gain an accurate picture of farm connectivity, nor how quickly movement networks change over time. For example, can movement data from last year be used to identify potential super-spreaders this year? How often do such analyses need to be updated? Answering these questions is key to moving from science to practice in terms of successful deployment of network-based targeted control strategies in swine production systems. In this study, Dr Dennis Makau and the VanderWaal lab aim to answer these questions for production systems in the United States.

CVM researchers awarded $1 million to develop strategies to protect animals during disease outbreaks

The University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine’s (CVM) Secure Food System (SFS) team collaborate with public and private partners to develop tactical biosecurity strategies to limit disease spread for specific animal movements based on risk-based science. The awarded work pursues these objectives:

Assess the risk of animal movements and their agricultural products during an outbreak and translate the risk-based science into workable movement permit guidance;
Develop tactical strategies to limit foreign animal disease (FAD) outbreak spread in integrated agriculture systems; and
Conduct outreach on emergency preparedness and the SFS platform.

How much is the spread of 1-7-4-related PRRS viruses due to animal movement?

This is our Friday rubric: every week a new Science Page from the Bob Morrison’s Swine Health Monitoring Project. The previous editions of the science page are available on our website.

Today, Dr. Makau and collaborators from the University of Minnesota provide insights into the role that repeated animal movements between farms play in the risk for Lineage 1A PRRS virus disease occurrence.

Keypoints:

Animal movements from 496 farms from a dense pig production area in the US, between 2014-2017, were analyzed.
Direct contact (through animal movements) and indirect contact with an L1A (Lineage 1A)-positive farm increased the likelihood of L1A occurrence, and occurrence of non-L1A PRRS virus one year prior decreased the likelihood of an L1A occurrence.
Outbreak risk increased for farms that engaged in more outgoing shipments.