Research on Swine Health: Foreign Animal Disease Surveillance

Sponsor Deadline: 

Aug 11, 2020

Sponsor: 

National Pork Board

UI Contact: 

Research on Foreign Animal Disease Surveillance
https://www.pork.org/research/

Research Objective: Develop validated diagnostic tests and sample types that can be used for surveillance and investigation testing for African swine fever, foot and mouth disease, classical swine fever, and swine vesicular diseases.  

  1. Investigate new/novel surveillance ante mortem and sampling types as individual or pooled sampling strategies. (Examples might include but are not limited to rectal swabs, oral swabs, nasal swabs or oropharyngeal  swabs, etc.) Does not include oral fluids.
  2. Investigate new/novel surveillance postmortem sampling types as individual or pooled sampling  strategies.  Priority should be given to samples that can be collected without the need for a full necropsy.  (Examples might include but are not limited to muscle swabs, etc.)
  3. Evaluate the use of processing fluids* as a possible diagnostic sample for detection of infection from a less virulent ASF strain. Project must include the comparison of viral load in processing fluids to the viral load of the tissue or blood in the animals sampled.
  4. Fit for purpose validation of classical swine fever antibody detection tests with increased diagnostic sensitivity and specificity that complement DIVA capable vaccines.
  5. Comparison of diagnostic sensitivity and specificity over time post inoculation of commercially available PCR diagnostic kits (FMD or CSF) to the standardized protocols approved for used in the National Animal Health Laboratory Network for FAD diagnostics using oral fluid specimens.
  6.  Investigate new/novel surveillance sampling types for ASF African swine fever or CSF classical swine fever that can be collected from pigs/carcasses at slaughter (examples might include but are not limited to muscle swabs, pooled blood, meat juice etc.)

*Processing fluids are defined as the serosanguinous fluid recovered from piglet castration and tail docking.

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