movement – Swine in Minnesota

Yes, science should inform policy, but how?

By Kaitlyn St. Charles, Carol Cardona, Timothy Goldsmith, Cesar Corzo and Marie Culhane, University of Minnesota

Stop movement orders are a big deal for all production phases, particularly for live pigs, but also for semen movements from boar studs to breeding farms.

In the United States, animal agriculture is having to make tough decisions about the quickly spreading and far-reaching diseases caused by H5 2.3.4.4b influenza A virus (USDA 2024). There have been substantial organized efforts to control H5 2.3.4.4b IAV in domestic poultry, because it is the cause of highly pathogenic avian influenza with severe illness and high death loss in infected flocks. So, it should be no surprise that efforts need to be made to control virus spread in other species, including humans.

Evaluating the role of vehicle movements to spread African swine fever

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’s Science Page takes a look at data analyzed by Jason A. Galvis and Gustavo Machado at North Carolina State University to determine the role of vehicles in the spread of ASFV.

Disentangling transport movement patterns of swine trucks

This is a recent publication from the MSHMP team regarding transport patterns within a Midwestern swine system. The full publication is available on the journal’s website.

Objectives

This project had the following objectives:

characterizing vehicle network before and during the COVID-19 pandemic,
Understanding vehicle movement: consistency of vehicle movements over time), and time spent at each site

Describing vehicle movement patterns within a production system in the Midwest – Part 2

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 is the second part of the project presented to you last week. The MSHMP team developed a method to track vehicle movement patterns in a system.

Key Points:

Twelve vehicles transporting weanling pigs and culled sows can interconnect a third of the premises within a Midwest swine system of more than 300 farms.
The system is highly inter-connected, with three identified clusters (“communities”)
Each farm can be reached (after passing) through 3 farms within the system-network.

Describing vehicle movement patterns within a production system in the Midwest

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 the MSHMP team presents the results of their latest project which proposed to first record vehicle movement patterns to then add that future disease prediction models. This is part 1 of their report. Part number 2 will be on the blog next week.

Key Points

Utilizing movement data to understand network connectivity can provide insights impacting disease control, animal welfare, and other areas.
The number of vehicle movements is constant over season and year, with no high or low seasons indicating a constant level of contacts.
From this subset of transport data, most of the trips are to sow farms (32.5%) and Truck-wash facilities (37.6%).
The average time for vehicle cleaning, disinfection and baking (at the truck-wash facilities) was ~3hrs.