By Grzegorz Tarasiuk and Jeffrey J. Zimmerman, Iowa State University CVM; Marta D. Remmenga, Kathleen C. O’Hara, Marian K. Talbert and Sarah Mielke, USDA; Marisa L. Rotolo and Pam Zaabel, National Pork Board; and Danyang Zhang, Iowa State University Department of Statistics

The swine industry is constantly striving to improve pork production, with disease detection and surveillance being crucial areas of focus.  An efficient surveillance approach that has gained widespread acceptance is the use of oral fluids for pathogen detection. First described in 2008 for monitoring porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus and porcine circovirus type 2 infections (Prickett et al., 2008a, 2008b), oral fluids have become a popular choice due to their ease of collection, cost-effectiveness and high diagnostic sensitivity.