The National Pork Board has unveiled an online platform that will make it easier for producers to track foreign animal disease outbreaks in the country and allow for more efficient contact tracing of infected animals.
The new AgView online tool, funded by the pork checkoff, will “help the U.S. pork industry respond faster than ever before possible in the event of a foreign animal disease (FAD) outbreak.”
“COVID taught us the best way to quickly contain and recover from a significant supply chain disruption, which an FAD outbreak would be, is through real-time information, collaboration and a common data set to inform decision making,” Pork Board CEO Bill Even said.
AgView is designed to help the U.S. pork industry coordinate a unified response to FADs across the nation — from grain farmers to producers, to state health officials and veterinarians. When producer-users grant permission, AgView securely provides state animal health officials with health status, site and pig movement data from registered farms in real-time. This data sharing would go a long way in aiding an effective FAD response and could ultimately help the industry more quickly contain or regionalize an outbreak.
“Time is money in an FAD response,” Dave Pyburn, NPB’s chief veterinarian, said, “which is why we’re excited to have AgView to help fill that gap and facilitate a quicker return to business for producers, especially in our export markets.”
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