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National Pork Board extends SHIC additional 2 years

The National Pork Board has extended the Swine Health Information Center (SHIC) two more years.

SHIC director Dr. Paul Sundberg tells Brownfield the center was formed by a one-time grant in 2015.

“That was July of 2015, and it was a 5-year project. We put it together as a 5-year project because this was an experiment. We didn’t know how it would work. We didn’t know how it would run. We didn’t know how it would go.”

He says “future funding will be dependent on return on investment” was written into the initial contract.

“I just talked to the National Pork Board’s board of directors last week and presented to them the 2019 Progress Report and the things that we’ve gotten done. And as they looked at that body of work from 2019 and going all the way back to 2015, they recognized that return on investment.”

Sundberg says among the SHIC accomplishments he’s most proud of is standardizing test results for major diagnostic labs and being awarded a USDA grant to study African swine fever in Vietnam.