Pork producers from across the nation spent the last few days working on the United States Swine Health Improvement Plan (U.S. SHIP) to better prepare for a potential Foreign Animal Disease (FAD) outbreak.

Last week, nine voting representatives and two members of the Oklahoma Pork team provided valuable perspective on behalf of our state's swine industry at the United States Swine Health Improvement Plan (U.S. SHIP) House of Delegates Meeting in Minnesota.

U.S. SHIP exists to bring producers and government partners together to create a "National Playbook" of technical standards related to Foreign Animal Disease (FAD) preparedness for African Swine Fever (ASF) and Classical Swine Fever (CSF). As a refresher, Oklahoma's voting delegation included:

Cristina Carmona - Prestage Farms
Dr. Steven Clifton - Tyson Foods
Dr. Suzanne Genova - Red Dirt Veterinary Services
Dr. Rod Hall - ODAFF
Dr. Alicia Gorczyca-Southerland - ODAFF
Noel Williams - Seaboard Foods
Dr. Jon Tangen - The HANOR Company
Travis Vaughan - Smithfield Foods,
Koe Wolfe - JBS.

The House of Delegates focused on U.S. SHIP's key tenets: biosecurity, traceability and disease surveillance. Delegates also participated in break-out sessions to dig deeper on questions related to traceability and animal movements, feral pigs and other serious biosecurity risks, and transportation and live haul sanitation. Overall, our Oklahoma crew felt the meeting was worthwhile with new information for our producers and government partners to consider.