U of M researchers lead major African swine fever breakthrough

University of Minnesota researchers recently led successful efforts to work on African swine fever virus (ASFV), developing and validating a surrogate virus for ASFV that will help develop effective mitigation strategies to control ASFV and keep it from entering North America. The disease has devastated pig populations and pork production in countries around the world.

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Market Lows Causing Concern: A podcast

Podcasts are a perfect way to get caught up with new swine information! We are presenting you the latest episode from “At The Meeting… Honoring Dr. Bob Morrison” in collaboration with SwineCast.

Dr. Steve Meyer (Lead Economist, Partners for Production Agriculture) joins the At the Meeting team to discuss the outlook for current low pig prices. Lower demand and increasing costs will make 2023 a difficult year, but Meyer says it is important to remember the advantages U.S. pork producers enjoy.

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Wait and see? Biosecurity decision-making under disease risk – Part 2

In the previous science page, Gabriela Bucini, Scott C. Merrill, Eric M. Clark, and Julie M. Smith of the Social Ecological Gaming and Simulation Lab at the University of Vermont shared that the decisions made by the players in different scenarios of disease risk, risk communication strategies, and neighboring farm biosecurity implementation allowed us to identify three prominent behavioral groups. The risk tolerant players invested very little in biosecurity in contrast to risk averse players who invested consistently throughout the simulation to protect their farms. Our third category, risk opportunists, primarily invested in biosecurity during high risk scenarios but limited investments during rounds with lower chance of infection.

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Best of Leman 2022: Evan Koep – Raising pigs in Prop 12 compliant farms – what is working (or not) for us

This is our most popular series on the blog. Once a month, we are sharing with you a presentation given at the Allen D. Leman swine conference, on topics that the swine group found interesting, innovative or that lead to great discussions.

You can find all of the presentations selected from previous conferences on the blog here.

This presentation was originally given by Dr. Evan Koep of Pipestone Veterinary Services during the 2022 Allen D. Leman Swine Conference, recorded September 19, 2022.

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DVM students: apply to the Morrison Swine Innovator Prize!

Veterinary students: Are you shadowing a swine practitioner this summer, or have you been involved in an interesting clinical case investigation? Did you work on your veterinary skills by designing a differential diagnosis list or working on a treatment plan? Did you investigate a problem by analyzing production records? Share your work at the Allen D. Leman Swine Conference to win the Morrison Swine Innovator Prize!

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