The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is awarding $2.29 million through the National Animal Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN) farm bill program to advance APHIS’ animal health preparedness. The 2018 Farm Bill provided funding for this program as part of an overall strategy to prevent animal pests and diseases from entering the United States and reduce the spread and impact of potential disease incursions.

“These farm bill funding awards will strengthen our ability to carry out our strategies for animal health emergency preparedness and better safeguard our agricultural industry,” said Jenny Lester Moffitt, Under Secretary for USDA’s Marketing and Regulatory Programs. “The more prepared we are to protect our agricultural commodities, the safer the food supply is for Americans and the rest of the world.”

The NAHLN funding supports projects focused on increasing capacity for disease testing through stockpiling efforts, enhancing data management through IT standardization, and increasing high-throughput testing with the addition of diagnostic testing instruments and technical expertise in laboratories.

The NAHLN is a nationally coordinated network and partnership of federal, state, and university-associated animal health laboratories providing animal health diagnostic testing to detect both foreign and endemic high-consequence pathogens in the nation’s food animals, which is vital to protecting animal health, public health, and the nation's food supply. Should foreign animal disease strike, these laboratories are the first line of defense in swiftly diagnosing and detecting the extent of the outbreak to limit the impact on producers.

Projects receiving funding include the enhancement of high-capacity testing for transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, increasing preparedness for an African swine fever outbreak by stockpiling primers and probe for NAHLN laboratories and enhancing the capacity of Animal Disease Research and Diagnostic Laboratory for early detection of emerging and foreign animal diseases using high throughput sequencing. A full list of NAHLN-funded projects is available here.

The 2018 Farm Bill provided funding for these programs as part of an overall strategy to prevent animal pests and diseases from entering the United States and reduce the spread and impact of potential disease incursions through advance planning and preparedness.