E149: Look Inside USDA’s Facility for Fighting Extreme Animal Diseases

Over the last two decades, the US livestock industry has had some painful encounters with foreign animal diseases– from High Path Avian Influenza and its impact on the poultry industry to “mad cow” to the current looming fear of African Swine Fever. One of the most challenging things about these kinds of highly transmissible and dangerous diseases is how difficult they are to study, and how vulnerable that absence of information can leave the industry. But in the last few weeks, USDA has opened a new facility in Kansas that promises to help close that information gap.DTN Ag Policy Editor Chris Clayton joins us today to discuss his rare first look at the new National Bio and Agro-Defense facility near the Kansas State campus in Manhattan. He got a chance to discuss the facility’s top security priorities, learn how the latest, state-of-the-art technology will aim to keep the facility, and US ag, and see for himself how diseases will be studied as the facility gets up and running. Plus, he’ll dive into the planned vaccine development work, and highlight the history of protecting US livestock from foreign disease.