Biosecurity is a big key to the success of the livestock industry.
Preventing disease from entering the herd is easier than treating it after the fact. That is why one expert is researching the safety of the feed industry.
He says that understanding how viruses spread and communication are key to battling foreign animal disease outbreaks, like African swine fever.
According to KSU’s Dr. Jordan Gebhart, “If we have a swine facility, for example, or a feedlot operation, or if we have a certain disease outbreak, a certain health issue, we need to communicate that to the right people. In general, there’s a certain stigma that’s associated with communicating some of those health challenges and wanting to internalize that information, but something like this where it’s connected as our feed supply chain is across a variety of different entities and different production systems, we really need to begin to communicate better across these different systems.”
Gebhart says that with the infrastructure and transportation systems in place across the nation, foreign animal diseases can spread quickly without proper communication.
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