U.S. invests $1.45 million in swine biosecurity projects

This program area priority within the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative focuses on increasing the national capacity to prevent, rapidly detect, and respond to biological threats to the U.S. agriculture and food supply. Supported activities will be aimed at increasing agricultural biosecurity at the regional and national levels, and across the public and private sectors.

Among the 14 projects supported, there are two related to swine:

Next generation surveillance for tick-swine contact in endemic and non-endemic regions for African swine fever virus

• Texas A&M Agrilife Research ($800,000)
• The two specific aims are to determine the vertebrate host community utilized by argasid ticks, competent vectors of ASFV, and quantify serological evidence of swine exposure to soft tick and hard tick bites.

Agricultural Biosecurity: Novel strategies to prevent and diagnose Classical swine fever virus

• Kansas State University ($650,000)
• The major goals of this project are to develop an efficacious DIVA-compatible CSF vaccine that produces rapid and strong protection against CSF disease in pigs, and develop novel diagnostic methods for differentiating wild-type infected animals from vaccinated animals.