What is needed to address emerging swine diseases?
• Surveillance data to provide objective measures of trends in endemic diseases. • Local capabilities to respond to adverse events detected by surveillance data. • Recognition of new and unusual disease events. • Ability to connect findings with other states. • Collaborative assessment of emerging swine diseases, reaching broad consensus on how to address the problem. • Varied response options: laboratory research, investigative field studies, producer-practitioner education, communication to allied industry, and eradication. • Graduated response capabilities, starting at local level, then regional, then national level. Several national surveillance initiatives are currently underway. However, the development of state-level decision-making bodies to make use of surveillance data to detect and respond to emerging swine diseases, and the formal networks for detecting the emergence of novel pathogens at either the local or national level, must be priorities. The good news is that much of
