Fast-spreading infectious diseases are among the costliest threats to food producers around the world. Understanding how these diseases spread and evolve is a big job for scientists.

Three groups of researchers at the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) have been awarded nearly $1 million in grants from the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Animal Disease Preparedness and Response Program (NADPRP), a federal program that provides project funding to help combat animal disease outbreaks in the U.S.

Whether training veterinarians in biosecurity and surveillance, or keeping hatcheries safe from avian influenza, CVM researchers are protecting animals and producers who depend on them.

Training mixed animal veterinarians to recognize swine disease

Foreign animal diseases (FADs) that infect pigs, such as African swine fever (ASF), foot-and-mouth disease, and classical swine fever, are highly contagious, deadly, and can devastate herds.

“We don’t have those diseases in the U.S. currently, but they are a threat, and we would want to catch them as early as possible if an introduction occurred,” says Rachel Schambow, a researcher in CVM’s Center for Animal Health and Food Safety (CAHFS).

Armed with a two-year grant from the NADPRP, Schambow and a team of researchers at CAHFS are developing a series of veterinary continuing education modules that will improve FAD preparedness and surveillance among small-scale pig farmers by educating the veterinarians who work with them. The modules will target mixed animal veterinarians who may see pigs in their practice—on small-scale farms, show pigs, or non-commercial farms raising pork for personal consumption—but not on a daily basis.

“There has been a lot of previous work to raise FAD awareness and preparedness with the intensive commercial swine industry,” Schambow says. “What we are not sure about is how well we are increasing awareness in small-scale or diversified farms, where the vets visiting these farms may not be swine specific.”

The team plans to launch the self-paced online courses in September 2026. The content will feature practical handouts for veterinarians and videos from international experts. Veterinarians will also have access to a series of webinars featuring Q&As with expert panels, which will be updated in real time as important events occur. The aim is to teach mixed animal veterinarians how to recognize and report pig FADs within the context in which they work, in case an introduction ever occurred.

“We want to make sure they have all the tools they need to report it and then also practice good biosecurity measures, which can look different for vets working on smaller farms,” Schambow says. “For example, large farms have a lot of biosecurity infrastructure, like showers, but small farms may not have that. That’s why we want education that targets these vets.”

Understanding how to safely move animals susceptible to avian influenza

With Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) still circulating in the U.S., and getting worse. Duck and upland game bird producers need to understand how safety may have changed for the movement of their flocks.

“The movement of live poultry during an HPAI outbreak is one of the riskiest pathways for disease spread,” says Rosemary Marusak, a board-certified poultry veterinarian and researcher on CVM’s Secure Food Systems team.

With funding through the NADPRP, Marusak and the UMN Secure Food Systems team will examine the risk of moving day-old ducklings and day-old upland game chicks from hatcheries that find themselves in high-risk HPAI control areas. This will allow the CVM team to develop biosecurity measures that are relevant to these specific movements that producers want to make out of or within an HPAI control area. 

These requirements will be part of permit guidance that will be published on the CVM’s Secure Food Systems website, for general state, federal, and duck and upland game bird commodity use. Collaboration between researchers, state agencies, and producers is at the core of the project.

“Our Secure Food Systems team uses an approach to risk assessment that follows the World Organisation for Animal Health standards, but we do this in a unique way,” Marusak says.

The team will conduct regular one-hour meetings online with a workgroup of industry members, state and federal regulatory partners, and academic and other subject matter experts. The information they share will ensure the mitigation guidelines Marusak’s team will publish are feasible for industries to use in the real world. They will combine this information with extensive scientific literature reviews and mathematical modeling, such that the best possible guidance gets to producers and government officials during the outbreak.

“We hope that our assessment will inform hatcheries of their risk and result in science-based guidance that is user-friendly and will help hatcheries to move their live animals without spreading disease and propagating an outbreak,” Marusak says.

Another CVM team secured a grant to proactively evaluate current biosecurity and surveillance measures for avian influenza, which has now infected not just poultry, but dairy cattle. Led by Carol Cardona, the Pomeroy Endowed Chair in Avian Health in CVM’s Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, the UMN team will work to prevent new viral sources of avian influenza that could emerge as a result of producers moving poultry between farms. The guidelines will help regulatory agencies get ahead of new outbreaks.

The emergence of H5Nx influenza A in dairy cattle, the spread of the outbreak across the country, and the sustained transmission among dairies have brought to light the need for the Secure Poultry Supply Plan (SPS) to consider what impact a new viral source may have on the risk of moving poultry and poultry products, the research team says.