Scientific Abstract
The US Swine Health Improvement Plan (US SHIP) is an animal health certification program that has undergone substantial development since its inception as a case study completed in 2019. Since that time, the program has grown as a collaboration between producers, state, and federal partners aimed to establish a platform to safeguard, improve, and represent health status across participating farm sites, supply chains, states, and regions. Initially developed through the leadership of a group of collaborators largely at academic institutions, the program rapidly grew with the support of swine producers, packers, and state and federal partners and has made progress towards becoming a fully-codified USDA Animal Health program. At the core of the US SHIP program, working groups have been focused on establishing dialogue focused on biosecurity, sampling and testing, and traceability. Many of these discussions resulted in program standards considered and ultimately voted upon by the US SHIP House of Delegates body. Within the biosecurity efforts of the US SHIP program, Feed Biosafety has been very active since the program’s inception. This project largely supported the efforts of the Feed Biosafety working group by providing for travel and salary expenses associated with coordination of the working group. Through these efforts, several resolutions have been passed by the US SHIP HOD and program standards have been incorporated into the program. Current program standards related to feed biosafety include the requirement that participants not participate in “garbage” or “swill” feeding, and an additional standard that outlines feed practices that will be implemented in the event of an ASF/CSF incursion into the United States. Using the framework of the US SHIP program, the Feed Biosafety working group has discussed the latest scientific findings related to feed biosafety and provided recommendations for consideration by the US SHIP HOD. The working group includes a broad range of stakeholders representing US SHIP stakeholders, swine producers, feed ingredient suppliers and feed industry representation, state, and federal partners. In addition to the program standards that have been incorporated into the US SHIP program, the working group also has extensively discussed practices associated with importing feed ingredients into the US from countries and regions affected by ASF/CSF. Through these efforts, a wide range of current practices have been identified and implemented with the goal of reducing risk of ASF/CSF introduction via imported feed ingredients. A practice implemented by many participants in our working group was extended holding time of ingredients imported from ASF/CSF affected regions. While such a practice has been shown to be quite common, there is significant variability in the specifics of this process including differences in duration of ingredient quarantine, when the clock starts for the quarantine period, as well as environmental storage conditions. For such practices to be consistently and effectively incorporated across a wide spectrum of swine producers, there needs to be greater clarity and consensus regarding what specific practices should be incorporated. Furthermore, questions remain regarding how such a program could be implemented on a meaningful scale including communication between ingredient manufacturers, distributors, feed manufacturers, and swine producers. The US SHIP Feed Biosafety working group aims to create a set of commonly accepted practices and create a framework upon which a responsible import program can be implemented by the US swine industry. With the support of this National Pork Board-funded project, we have been able to make substantial progress focused on Feed Biosafety within the framework of the US SHIP program. As the US SHIP program transitions to a USDA Animal Health program, the discussions, dialogue, and contributions of the Feed Biosafety working group continue to be an important component of the US SHIP program.
