Guests: Dr. Jordan Gebhardt, Kansas State University and Dr. Chad Paulk, Kansas State University Co-host: Dr. Zack Lowman Tonight we are talking feed supply biosecurity and the many challenges we face as we try to keep various animal diseases at bay. In late July, the USDA announced that African Swine Fever was detected in the Dominican Republic, inching dangerously close to the U.S. swine herd.
Guests: Dr. Jordan Gebhardt, Kansas State University and Dr. Chad Paulk, Kansas State University Co-host: Dr. Zack Lowman, Balchem
Tonight we are talking feed supply biosecurity and the many challenges we face as we try to keep various animal diseases at bay. In late July, the USDA announced that African Swine Fever was detected in the Dominican Republic, inching dangerously close to the U.S. swine herd.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt explained that African Swine Fever (ASF) is caused by a virus. He discussed the history of the virus and the impact that a disease like this can have on the animals, the producer and the industry. He also expressed his concern of the virus spreading to South America or Central America from its current location in the Dominican Republic. (7:26)
Dr. Chad Paulk discussed the potential contamination of the feed supply if or when the virus reaches the United States and how the feed supply chain can be changed to help reduce the spread of the virus. (16:36)
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt explains that African Swine Fever can only infect swine - domesticated pigs or wild boar. If a human were to consume a contaminated product, there would be no threat to them whatsoever. (24:03)
Dr. Chad Paulk discusses prevention of the virus and steps to take in order to reduce the risk. He gave the example of a feed mill processing a potential contaminated product and producing particles in the air that could contaminate the airspace of a road that has a lot of swine in transit. The steps will have to be used by everyone involved in production to help eliminate the spread of the virus so it needs to be built into the industry culture if that time comes. (40:00)
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt discusses the importance of making biosecurity practices convenient for the producer and their employees. If it is convenient for employees, they will be more likely to stick with the biosecurity measures to go about their daily routine. (51:43)
Dr. Chad Paulk and Dr. Jordan Gebhardt both discuss the importance of working together as an industry to prevent this disease from making it to the United States as well as working together with biosecurity as an industry if/when it does get here. (1:01:05)
To find Dr. Jordan Gebhardt’s presentation from the K-State Swine Day, visit Latest findings from the K-State-Vietnam partnership – Jordan Gebhardt
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Scott Sorrell (00:00:07):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange. The pub-cast where leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal agriculture. Tonight, we're talking about the feed supply chain, and biosecurity, and the many challenges we face as we try to keep various animal diseases at bay. In late July, the USDA announced that African swine fever was detected in the Dominican Republic, inching dangerously closer to the US swine herd. Hi, I'm Scott Sorrell, one of your hosts here tonight at the Real Science Exchange. Tonight, we welcome Dr. Jordan Gebhardt from Kansas State University to the pub. He joined us on the Real Science Lecture series in early September to give us a look into this important topic. If you want to watch the webinar, go to Balchem.com/realscience and scroll down through the recorded sessions. Tonight, we're going to go a bit deeper and discuss how diseases spread and what we can do to mitigate it. Dr. Gephardt, welcome to the Real Science Exchange.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt (00:01:12):
Well, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here with the group today, and I look forward to the discussions over the next period of time we have together.
Scott Sorrell (00:01:19):
All right. Well, as you know, we typically have some drinks while we're on the pubcast here, but understand both you and Chad are at the University today and don't have any drinks. So why don't you tell us if you were drinking, what would be your drink of choice?
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt (00:01:37):
Yeah, I keep it pretty simple. Stick to beers, normally. Light beers and hoppy IPA's a little bit, so a little bit of anything as long as it's cold.
Scott Sorrell (00:01:47):
Yeah. Good. Hey, can you give us a little bit of background in terms of how did you get started in the area of bio-security?
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt (00:01:54):
I grew up on a small family farm in Western Michigan. My dad owned and operates a local grain elevator and feed mill as well. So spent a lot of time there understanding the day-to-day operations of the feed mill, and really enjoy that. And also spent some time growing up with a swine veterinarian in west Michigan, and really enjoyed that as well, with helping to take data, production records and helping to make both health and management recommendations and understanding what's going on with the herd. So really I enjoyed both of those avenues and when I went and got a bachelor's degree in animal science from Michigan State University prior to coming out here to K-State. And really at that point, I didn't know if I wanted to go further down the pathway of nutrition. And with some of my upbringing in the feed mill and experience and really passion for that area.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt (00:02:49):
Or if I wanted to go down the path of veterinary medicine and really look at swine production medicine. So one of my real good mentors at Michigan State had put me in touch with the swine team here at Kansas State University. So I was fortunate that I came out and and had a chance to learn more about the program and was given a chance to stick around and be able to do both my PhD in animal science here at K-State, as well as get my DVM degree here from the University as well. So in both of those, I really did kind of go down this tangential pathways of both understanding and learning and conducting research focused on nutrition, but also a large component of that training was also focused on the area of biosecurity. Specifically looking at the feed side.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt (00:03:35):
And at that time with PEDV, or porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, being introduced into the US in 2013, but really spreading throughout much of North America through 2014. It was really a time where we had an opportunity to learn more about how the feed supply chain interacts with animal health. And there are several examples over the decades where this is particularly important. Not so much on the swine side, however. Understanding the risk and spread of salmonella in poultry feed obviously is very important, and quite a bit of time is spent thinking about that. But really on the swine side, specifically thinking about viruses, it really was a relatively new concept for us. So had a chance to conduct some research over the years looking specifically at that. And then more recently I was finishing up my schooling here at the University just under two years ago, and have since transitioned on into a faculty role. And hope to continue to conduct some of that and train the next generation of animal scientists and veterinarians to go out into the field and to have a good, solid research background in research training to know how to apply ideas. Not only from academic or a research paper perspective, but how do you take that information, generate recommendations, and communicate those recommendations to those producers in the field.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt (00:04:58):
So real fortunate for the opportunity to do that, and through that training and have had great mentors, great experiences. Both at Michigan State and as well here at Kansas State. And fortunate for the opportunity to continue to work with grad students and work with faculty and colleagues like Dr. Paulk here that we're real lucky to have on our team here on staff at K-State.
Scott Sorrell (00:05:19):
Yeah. Speaking of Dr. Paulk, I see you brought him as a guest. Why don't you tell us a little bit about him.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt (00:05:26):
Yeah. So I'll let Chad do a lot of the big introductions. But really what I thought it would be real interesting to sit down and have a conversation here today is really focusing on the ability of taking science and translating it into the field. And Chad does a lot of work working with feed mills in this area and this concept of feed biosecurity. Really look forward to Chad's thoughts and what we have and what we generate as a discussion in the area. Not only what we know about veterinary medicine, and Chad's training as well in nutrition, but how do we translate that into practical decisions in the field that producers and feed mills can implement.
Scott Sorrell (00:06:06):
Chad, I understand you're also there at the University today. And if you were drinking, what would be in your glass today?
Dr. Chad Paulk (00:06:14):
Well, I'd probably try to find a nice local refreshing IPA. But I can't go wrong with a Coors Light either.
Scott Sorrell (00:06:19):
Alright, good. That's true too. All right. Tonight, my co-host is Dr. Zach Lowman. Zach is the monogastric technical service lead here at Balchem. Zach, what are you drinking tonight? And how did you meet both Jordan and Chad?
Dr. Zack Lowman (00:06:38):
I'm pretty basic when it comes to alcohol, I've got a Miller Light. They're my usual go-to. I met Chad, what, four or five years ago, at least? I don't even remember which conference it was at. But we have several mutual friends and we always seem to run into each other at these conferences
Scott Sorrell (00:07:00):
Very well. So tonight I'm going to have a Wabash Reserve from the Boot Hill Distillery. And this was given to me by Ms. Stacy. Stacy is the producer of our podcasts, and I want to thank her for that, I'm looking forward to having it. To get us started, can you guys both summarize the African swine fever situation as it stands today here in early October, 2021? Yeah.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt (00:07:26):
So a real brief background on this very devastating disease is ASF or African swine fever is caused by a virus. And this virus is similar to many other viruses that we deal with, not only in pig production, but livestock production and even more broadly in human medicine as well. But there are some very unique characteristics about this virus that make it particularly challenging which we'll spend a little bit of time kind of digging into a little bit more. But as of now, it’s been endemic or it’s steadily circulating in certain regions of the world for many decades. Been in Africa for a very long time even. Been in Eastern Europe for well over a decade, and then in 2018 or so it made its trek over to Southeast Asia, and in a sense been rapidly circulating for much of that region over there.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt (00:08:17):
Really devastating the swine production and agricultural systems. And it's, it's interesting that not only does a disease like ASF affect just pig production, but also the other very intricate branches of agriculture that feeders are involved with pig production. For example, here in the US a typical pig is fed a diet primarily consisting of corn and soybeans. If there's a serious impact on the number of pigs we have on feed, that has huge ramifications on other areas or other aspects of swine of agricultural production. Where those soybeans end up, where does that corn end up? And what the marketplace looks there for some of those other commodities? So it's really easy to immediately overlook that to some degree. Think about it’s a disease affecting pigs, so it affects pig production. But really it extends much further beyond that. It affects not only that industry, but also the other support industries that are heavily involved and those devastating foreign animal diseases have a tremendous impact on their communities.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt (00:09:24):
Not only the emotional toll that if controlling a disease like ASF, which largely involves a lot of depopulation of affected animals as our primary control strategy because we don't have good vaccines that are approved and currently available for use today. So the impact on the producers and the communities when controlling some of these very devastating diseases has a huge impact. So as you mentioned, it made its way into the Dominican Republic in late July, and it has since been diagnosed in Haiti as well. So as of today, with the best of our knowledge, it's restricted to just the one island of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. However, we are very, very concerned that it could spread further from there and to the mainland South America or even into Central America. And here being in the US very concerned about ways and potential routes of entry here into the U S as well.
Scott Sorrell (00:10:21):
So understand this is not the first time it's been in the Dominican. In fact, back in the late ‘70s that it got to the Dominican, Haiti, and I believe also Puerto Rico. But it was eradicated. How did they do that?
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt (00:10:35):
Yeah, it really is as I mentioned, the biggest way to we help control this disease is through depopulation or euthanasia of affected animals. We don't have a vaccine that's currently available. There are several different that are at different stages of development and approval processes, but today, if a population is affected with this disease, if it were to be here in the US, our primary strategy would be to remove those effected animals from our herd to prevent that animal of being able to cause that virus to reproduce and further disseminate from there. So in the past and the late ‘70s and early 80s, in the Dominican and Haiti in that region there were a large number of animals that had to unfortunately be depopulated to control the spread of that very devastating virus.
Dr. Chad Paulk (00:11:22):
So Jordan, we think a lot about domestic pigs, and that's really all I know about. But the interesting piece is the wild boar population, and we know in the US especially down in Texas in those areas is huge. Do we actually think they actually completely depopulated it in the Dominican and were able to get rid of it out of those certain wildlife? Or was it just kind of lingering around and we didn't know about it?
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt (00:11:48):
Yeah, that's a great question. I don't know that I have the exact answer to that. I imagine being dormant for 30 or 40 years probably wasn't all that likely, given that in that part of the world, how linked in some degree, the wild population is with domestic populations. With wild boars coming in and being very closely within proximity to domesticated pigs. So I would imagine, or I would guess it probably was eradicated from the island for a period of time. And then this is a new introduction, but it brings up a great point that here in the US, not only in Texas, wild boar populations seem to be creeping more and more north by the year. Whether we can discuss or debate back and forth what may be causing or driving some of that.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt (00:12:40):
But at I think it is quite clear that the feral pig population is broadening its range in the large sense. And once the disease gets into a wild pig population, it is extremely difficult to get the disease out of that population. And really that's part of what much of Europe is struggling with today. In areas of Poland, Germany and that region, it's primarily the wild pigs where they find this virus causing disease. There are certain introductions from time to time into domestic pigs but controlling it in wild pig populations is extremely challenging. And another disease, another virus that the wild pigs have been particularly problematic to help control is pseudorabies virus. So pseudorabies virus has been eradicated from commercial swine in the US since I believe about 2004. However, there are questions remaining and instill a pretty strong hypothesis that it is in our wild pig populations here in the west. So that's another one that it's very challenging to control that population of wild animals. And once a disease gets in and, and continues to circulate- very challenging to eradicate it.
Dr. Zack Lowman (00:13:53):
The wild population: is it more susceptible or more resistant compared to commercial swine?
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt (00:13:58):
Yeah, to my knowledge, I haven't dug into that information a tremendous amount, but at least the info that I do have, it seems that in general, I don't know exactly the mechanism behind it, but wild pigs tend to survive a little bit better or don't seem to be as negatively impacted quite as well. Like any pathogen, if it does a good job of killing its host in general, that's not a very good evolutionary strategy. You're not going to be around too long if you kill off all the hosts. So in the wild population, I think in some degree it does tend to circulate more within the population as opposed to being a more devastating initial disease outbreak.
Scott Sorrell (00:14:38):
Right. In domestic hogs is like 80% death rate, right? So are you saying it's less than that in the wild population?
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt (00:14:45):
Yeah, it's hard to know exactly. And even on the domestic side, domestic pig population, it's quite intriguing some of the variability. And generally we talk about as a highly impactful disease. And there are certainly some cases where mortality is very, very high. 70, 80, 90, or 100% mortality in some of those cases. But there's also some, and part of it is where within the disease process you're looking at. Initially within the first couple of weeks of being infected, and unfortunately it doesn't look that much different than some of the other diseases we see more routinely. We've had here in our US pig population, some really nasty PRRS strains circulating the past decade or so. And within the last six to eight months, it's been a really a virulent PRRS 1-4-4 strain, and really in the acute stages of an ASF outbreak, it really doesn't look that different from a very highly virulent outbreak of PRRS 1-4-4. However, as that disease process continues.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt (00:15:46):
There are certainly some signs that would indicate much, much more towards African swine fever, classical swine fever. But within that, depending on when you look at the different stages of infection with ASF, the clinical picture can vary quite substantially. A little bit of sickness, red pigs with the elevated body temperatures, but really looking somewhat normal. If you let that progress a couple of weeks within the population, then you can get to really, really high levels of mortality. So that the 80% in general, if you let it progress long enough, I'd say it would be very accurate. But interestingly, it can vary quite a bit from situation to situation, and outbreak to outbreak.
Scott Sorrell: (16:25)
Dr. Paulk, I've heard it said that it's not a matter of if African swine fever makes it to the United States, it's a matter of when. What are your thoughts on that?
Dr. Chad Paulk: (16:36)
Yeah, I've kind of thought the same way. The interesting part of that equation has I think more about how is it going to get here? So yes, I'm with the when and how, and how can we delay that? And the exciting thing for us has been really looking into feed ingredients and feed as a vector. And if that can be a potential, and if we need to be thinking about what's the risks there. And you know, I think that was really hot topic for us, but as soon as it landed in the Dominican and Haiti, I kind of stopped thinking about that and started to think there's probably other ways it's gonna come to the US, and I'm not as worried about ingredients and imports right or wrong, but now I'm starting to worry about if it gets here, how do I prevent the spread through the feed supply chain?
Dr. Chad Paulk: (17:29)
And so with how close the location is, I've shifted my thought process to, okay, when we do get it, what do we need to do? How do we not spread it all over the place with how our feed supply chain's designed? And if we do have something that gets contaminated, how do we decontaminate it? And the interesting thing coming back to the wild boar population, I think if you look in the Midwest in the way some of our production systems are designed, you know, we have those biosecurity practices in place that would hopefully keep a disease out that was in a wild boar population. The issue is though if that pig dies in a field that is harvested, then does that grain get contaminated? So once again, what do we need to be thinking about on the feed supply chain side to reduce that spread and potential risk of moving it around.
Scott Sorrell: (18:23)
Okay. So how do you think it got to the Dominican? And then if and when, or if it comes to the United States, how- you said you're not no longer thinking it's going to be feed- how's that going to happen?
Dr. Chad Paulk: (18:37)
Just for clarity, I'm not saying it's not going to be, I just don't think about it to the same intensity as I did. You know, I'll let Jordan comment on how it got to the Dominican, I have no clue. I think the biggest concern is we think about people movement. And with the Dominican and Haiti being so close and you have more people, whether it's immigration or travel coming across, the potential for pork products being in, in my mind seems to be the highest risk. You know, it's a little easier to control when it's further away, but when you increase those numbers, you have the potential. That could, that seems to be the biggest issue.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (19:23)
Yeah. And really one of the unique- you mentioned, there's some, some things about this virus that are very similar to others and some things that are unique. One of the really unique pieces of African swine fever virus and classical swine fever virus is that they can be found in and survive in different meat products or pork products for a very extended period of time. If something like, we mentioned PEDV porcine epidemic diarrhea virus a little bit earlier and how that has such a tremendous impact on young piglet mortality, and basically strips their small intestine out so they can't absorb nutrients and and they dehydrate and just due to lack of nutrition, have that very high mortality. We don't really worry about whether a pork product would have that virus in it or not. Something like ASF, if I'm in an area of the world where ASF is circulating, if somehow an infected animal ends up being processed and made into a sausage.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (20:19)
And even if that sausage is cured or processed for a period of time there's some really good data out there that's been out there for a long time that would indicate that hundreds or more days after being processed, ASF virus can still be found in and be still infective within different pork products. So I think that's one of the big things that are even more of a challenge for ASF and CSF compared to some of the other foreign disease threats. Not only do we have to worry about the movement of people and whether they have that virus on their shoes or on their clothing or on their luggage, not only do we have to worry about if it's live animal imports into the US from other parts of the world, making sure those animals aren't affected with that disease, but we also have to worry about food products or food byproducts.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (21:07)
If a plane is coming into the US from a part of the world, and for some reason, if there are pork products being served on that plane, or ends up in the garbage, where does that material end up? In general, the Department of Homeland Security and our border protection folks to a great job of understanding where different vessels or planes have been and understanding the potential risk of what diseases they could introduce into the US through those different by-product streams or garbage streams. But I think that's it's a big challenge, especially in this part of the world that, if it's in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, quite a bit of traffic back and forth to Central America, whether it be air traffic, vessel traffic, or otherwise. If it gets introduced into Central America, then it's a matter of time. In sense of the number of people coming and going across our Southern border, or even if it ends up in Canada coming across the Northern border, just based on the number of folks coming and going. Whether it's immigration routine trade and traffic, just that vast amount of people movement and product movement and food product movement. Very, very difficult to control that volume.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (22:20)
And in the sake of a foreign animal disease like ASF, it really only takes one animal to be infected. One example, one opportunity for a contaminated shoe, or clothing, meat product coming into contact with a wild pig. Or even worse coming into contact with a domestic pig, and then spreading within that population. And the number of folks and products coming and going on a daily basis is a very, very substantial and significant challenge for us. So the challenge with ASF, it can come in in a lot of different ways. And people movement- and I like to say that viruses, bacteria, different pathogens don't have legs. They can't walk, walk down the street or walk down to the neighbor's pig farm. There are certain viruses, for example, that can aerosolize and spread for hundreds of yards, even miles in some, some cases, but viruses don't have legs. They're not going to walk from from Kansas over to Missouri. But what can happen, and what do have legs are people and the vehicles that we drive. So that's one of the big shifts in mindset that I've had to have as I learn more about this area is understanding people movement. Whether it be foot traffic or vehicle traffic. That's a really, really important piece to understanding the spread of infectious disease within our very integrated and very efficient swine production and feed production systems.
Scott Sorrell: (23:46)
So you talked a little bit about it being spread by hogs. Can it be spread by other animals? And I don't mean as a fomite, but actually, you know, can it infect humans? Maybe it doesn't cause disease, but can we be carriers birds, rodents, those kinds of,
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (24:03)
Yeah. So ASF African swine fever in classical swine fever, the only animals that those can in fact are sewered species of swine species, whether it's a domesticated pig or a wild boar. And there are several different variants of that but does not infect other animals whatsoever. If air does not affect humans whatsoever, and there's no food safety risk whatsoever to humans if an animal ingests a infected carcass that virus can pass through them, however, the virus does not replicate within a host other than a pig whatsoever. And again, we talk about being able to spread and meat products but even if in the off chance that a human were to consume those contaminated products more so in other parts of the world and not here in the US those products pose no health risks whatsoever to humans at all
Scott Sorrell: (24:55)
Very well. Let's dig into some of the research that you've done looking into the potential for African swine fever being transmitted in feeds. I understand you had some research set up with a cooperator in Vietnam. Can you walk us through that? What were you looking for and how did you set up those studies?
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (25:16)
Yeah, so that was a really unique opportunity that we are really, really fortunate to have a great collaborator located over Vietnam. And shortly after ASF was first introduced into Vietnam, or was first detected in the country, I believe it was February of 2019. That collaborator wanted to understand what risk was ASF to different aspects of their business aspects, of their swine production and feed production divisions. And they had some farms that had become infected and were able to track back the origin of some of those infections and learn about that further. But it really, again, it goes back to our PED days and some of the research that was implemented of environmental sampling, sampling of feeder ingredients, sampling on farm to help make an epidemiological link between the feed and between swine production. Whether there is a strong link there, or whether we need to do anything to intervene.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (26:15)
So that was really the basis of it. They were very supportive and knew some of the data and methods that were out there and wanted to apply it to their system and say, and take a step back, pull back the sheets, open up the hood and say, what can we learn? Where are our challenges today? Where are our areas of opportunity that we can make improvement to overall keep our herd healthier. Reduce the risk that we spread this disease between groups of pigs. So that's really the basis of it. That was our, our foundation. We wanted to answer, what are we doing well, what was the system doing well? And are there any gaps or any areas where improvements could be made? So that really helped drive a lot of the sampling strategy early on. And there were several different areas where we focused on, and again, that comes back to the people movement.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt (00:27:00):
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
So some of that data would indicate that really any area where people are coming and going, and largely that data shows that trucks are another area that are very problematic that in that part of the world, most of the feed is not in bulk form, but rather is in bags. So very labor intensive process. The truck has to drive into the farm. Several folks, whether they be farm employees or employees coming to the farm within that feed truck have to unload those bags of feed into the farm. And then there's some that get back into the truck to go back to the mill, to get the next load. So the people in vehicle movement we learned was very, very important that we need to understand further. And there's lots of data available indicating and showing that we can wash the outside of a truck pretty well.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
We've all been through a carwash. We can high pressure water. We can apply a disinfectant to the outside of a vehicle. That's really easy. We know how to do that. That's effective. Now think when you're going home from work at the end of the day, or going to the grocery store, opening up your car door, looking inside and looking around. It's not very easy to pressure wash and disinfect that. And even with a rubber floor mats and those that it makes it a little easier, but seats, steering wheels, shifter knobs, there are so many different surfaces within the cab of a truck. It makes it very challenging to effectively disinfect. And we know that not only in some of the data with ASF, but some other swine pathogens, trucks or vehicles are a very, very common place to find that contamination.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
So that's led to some other more recent projects where we stand back and we went to several to a scrap yard and found three scraps semis, and took the cabs off those semis and brought those back to our feed safety research center here at the University. And this spring, we took several different surfaces and those, and wheeled them into our VSL2 lab and inoculated them with several different swine viruses and tested different ways of decontaminating and disinfecting those truck cabs. And we still have a little bit more to learn from that. We need to follow up on that work some and understand it further, but really what some of the data to us is really stood out to me is that people movement is so important and being able to disinfect and decontaminate surfaces Where people go and things they touch is really, really important.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
But unfortunately it's not that simple. Cabs of trucks are really, really tough to disinfect and likewise a feed mill. Whether that comes in, whether a pathogen comes into the mill in an ingredient, or whether a truck driver coming from a farm walks that contamination, walks that virus or bacteria into the mill. Pathogens, or if there's anything harder to get a pathogen out of that harder than a truck cab, it's a feed mill. There's so many different surfaces. It's a very complex scenarios with lots of dust and nooks and crannies. And we can't go in very readily and pressure wash and disinfect very well. So really, really challenging environment to disinfect and decontaminate. So that's an area that we continue to have a lot of questions and need additional work, but people move things around. Vehicles move things around, and it's not all that simple to disinfect certain surfaces we've come to find out.
Scott Sorrell: (
)
Yeah. I remember during the webinar, one of the questions was, are you using ozone in those truck cabs? Or what was it that you were using to disinfect those cabs in your study?
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
Yeah. So in that one, there's a couple of different research questions we wanted to answer. One of them was, does application technique make a difference? If if we take a garden spray or pump handheld sprayer, put a disinfectant in that and sprayed the cab, what would be the impact of that compared to what's called a hurricane fumigation system. It's got a small disinfectant tank and you plug it in and turn it on. And it creates a fine mist of whatever disinfectant you put in. So we would put that on the passenger seat of the truck pointed towards the driver's seat, turn that on for a period of time to let that generate a fume or a contact with all those surfaces. And then the final, the third treatment that we were using and evaluating was chlorine dioxide based product. And this one that we were particularly intrigued about was the ability. It's very simple, very straightforward, a small packet, put it into contact with water, and it generates a chlorine dioxide gas that fills that airspace entirely.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
So the nice thing about that, that we were interested in was that it in some sense, removes the human element that whether where you place that hurricane fumigation system, or if you're using a handheld pump sprayer, it's very dependent upon how well the person is applying that disinfectant to that very, very complex series of surfaces. What we liked about the gas form, you put it in there, let it sit for 10 hours and stand back. And that fully fills that airspace, hopefully coming into contact with all of those complex surfaces within that, within that truck cab. So like I mentioned, we still have a little bit more to learn there. And some of those initial results will be shared at our swine day. Our swine day report will come out mid November here from the University, and we'll have an update available with some of the data there. But that was a big question is is that gas, gas application form? Could there be any benefit there. And we still have to learn a little bit more, but optimistic about the potential of that application technique..
Scott Sorrell: (
)
Yeah. Dr. Paulk, were you involved in some of that research? And if so, what was your role?
Dr. Chad Paulk: (
)
So real quick, Scott, I want to make a comment. I think that ozone question's very interesting. I'm not an expert in it or know much about it at all, but it's funny how many ozone machines I've now seen on campus since COVID. So I'm guessing somebody thinks they work on viruses to some extent. I think the interesting thing on the feed mill side or with the truck cabs on that makes it a little different is the organic material. And how do you handle that? And I think that's where your application becomes real intriguing and trying to figure out how do we handle that versus if something's aerosolized and trying to handle it. So yeah, from the research standpoint, we that project was actually hosted over in our, or some of our, the FSRC is managed by our- it's attached to our feed mill. So we really make sure we get all the equipment in there and handle that facility and how to handle the application procedures and different things.
Dr. Chad Paulk: (
)
And try to think about how, how these are going to be implemented from a practical standpoint to make sure, you know, we're really testing the applied portion of the research. We're, you know, we're trying to build off of previous information that'll lead us to what we think will actually get rid of the virus. And then we're coming in from a, how do we actually apply it and see if the application works. So that's, that's really how we got involved. We also kinda tagged onto this project to look at boot baths and trying to figure out liquid versus dry boot baths and keeping pathogens out from a foot traffic standpoint. Cause that's one of the biggest questions we get at feed mills. Do we really need these? If we have foot baths, how often do we need to change them out? How much material buildup can you have in them? I mean the questions just keep coming about the efficacy and if it's worth worrying about them.
Dr. Chad Paulk: (
)
So while we're in this facility, because the biggest cost is getting in there, getting everything set up, getting all your approvals, et cetera, et cetera. And so we are fortunate enough to kind of tag on a little project just to try to develop a model of, you know, putting contamination, in this case, a virus on a boot and walking it through different types of scenarios, different foot baths, or not foot baths with or without organic material to try to build that model that we can further test some of these practical application questions. So it's something we're working on. We're really excited about. Cause it seems like a very easy concept, but we get a ton of questions on what's the best way to do it to make it worth the effort.
Scott Sorrell: (
)
So based on what you learned so far, what are some of those practical things you think we can take away today and actually use on the farm? I know there's more research to be done, but what do you know so far?
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
Yeah, I think that to build on the boot bath project, I really thought that was a great way of answering some really simple questions. It seems that what types of products, how often you need to change it, but really the science is not there nearly as much as we would like. So great project forming the foundation of hopefully quite a bit of future work in that area. And that area, one of the practical ones is that with a lot of disinfectants, if there's organic material built up, that disinfectant isn't nearly as effective. And whether that's a dry disinfect, or a liquid disinfectant, making sure that in the case of a boot bath that you clean those out periodically. There's not a lot of organic material scum on the surface of that liquid disinfecting the boot bath, cleanliness of, of those disinfected baths are really, really important.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
And likewise on, on whether it be truck cabs and insides of the cab or outside of the truck, making sure that you remove as much organic material as you can prior to applying a disinfectant is really, really important. So those are some of the big takeaways that not only is taking a disinfectant. Following the label is really important, making sure it's at the appropriate dilution, the appropriate concentration. The old adage of if a little is good, a lot is better isn't necessarily true when it comes to disinfectants. So making sure you're following the label, you're diluting it at the appropriate rate. Contact time is a really important piece with disinfectants that just because you put a disinfectant on a surface, doesn't mean it's instantly killing the bacteria, viruses, whatever pathogens you're concerned with. It takes a period of time for that disinfectant to work. So making sure that appropriate contact time is really, really important as well. So we've learned a lot a lot of work left to do obvious obviously, but one of the big recommendations I'd say for on-farm application or in mill application on some of these technologies is following the label is really, really important with contact time, dilution, and removing organic material.
Scott Sorrell: (
)
Yeah. So you had talked about organic material. What is it about organic materials opposed to inorganic material that makes it more of a better vector for the virus?
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
I'm not a microbiologist by any stretch of the imagination. And so to keep things pretty simple and within my knowledge base anyway, it's not as much the ability for organic material- and when I, when we mean organic material: dirt, feces, feed, all of those types of materials. It's not as much, in some cases it is allows the virus to harbor better, remain viable for longer. But a lot of it, when it comes down to disinfection, is those types of products or those types of compounds reduce the ability for a disinfectant to work. Lots of different classes of disinfectants depending on their mechanism and mode of action. But to keep it pretty straight forward the ability, those types of products, feed material, dust, dirt feces, reduces the ability for those disinfectants to kill whatever you're trying to kill. So if you remove that material to start with, then that allows that disinfectant to actually kill what you're going after.
Dr. Chad Paulk: (
)
And is it actually a function of just contact? Is it almost like a barrier that prevents the disinfectant from coming in contact with that virus that protects it? Or is there, am I oversimplifying that?
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
I think that that probably is a pretty big component of it. I think there are also some functional, some chemical properties that change when feces comes into contact with a disinfectant. Changes that disinfectant then reduces its ability to actually disinfect.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
It's a complicated scenario and in my simple brain, if we remove all the feces before we disinfect that's, that's the best way to do it.
Scott Sorrell: (
)
So I know that Kansas State has done a lot of research on taking a look at the transmission of virus in feed stuffs. What can you tell us about some of the key learnings that you guys have found out there? Cause a lot of the, you know, we buy feed stuffs from countries that are currently infected with African swine fever.
Dr. Chad Paulk: (
)
I think that to keep it easy, and the biggest thing for me is what I keep coming back to is prevention. Whatever you can do to reduce the risk. There's no one silver bullet. It's multiple things that you could potentially do. The more that you do, the less likely- the more that you do, the more you're likely to prevent it. And it's a much, although it seems like a headache to take these steps, to have preventative steps in place. I think if you, if we ended up with some of these diseases or had contaminated mills, it's going to be a much bigger headache than you realize. And so that's kind of the key thing for me. It's just, what do we think about on the front side from a preventative standpoint. How can we reduce the risk and understand every system's different?
Dr. Chad Paulk: (
)
Some people have to do certain things, no matter what, you know, maybe you don't, you have to go a high risk ingredient because you have no other option, every system is different. I think really taking a step back to consider what can we do? And then the flip side of that is how do we build the culture around it to get the entire system to have buy-in to doing that. So, you know, you can say, Hey, we're going to do this for preventative measures, but if all your employees aren't bought into that system, then the success of it's going to be less,
Scott Sorrell: (
)
You mentioned some high risk ingredients. Can you elaborate on what those might be?
Dr. Chad Paulk: (
)
Yeah. So, I think when, when we think about high risk, there's been a lot of research out there that shows different ingredients. More of our protein sources and some other ones- animal meals- that will harbor the virus. But we also need to think about how can something potentially come in contact with a virus. So for instance, you know, corn in the US right now is not a high risk ingredient, but if I have a thousand positive wild boars in my field that I'm about to harvest, does the risk of that ingredient go up, right? Cause there's potential for contamination there. Or if I'm, you know, drying the grain on a road that trucks that haul a lot of pigs is driving down, does that increase the risk of contamination? So I think being creative about how we think about what's the potential for these viral particles that come in contact with the ingredients. And then understanding its ability to survive in those ingredients. So if the ingredient is going to go through a thermal processing step, you know, the risk is different than if it's a raw ingredient that's never been exposed to heat.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
Yeah. And where that whole research area is at still has some- a lot of it's focused on, we have this ingredient and if we inoculate a virus into that, let's understand it stability. And over time, whether that's through shipping conditions, and the big piece that Chad did a real nice job explaining, I think that's really important. That's really hard to measure or hard to gauge, is what's the risk of that product becoming contaminated in the first place. And the example of wild boar and drying on the side of the road is a great one. And another one that I I often think about is something that's packaged in single use disposable bags probably is a lot lower risk than something that's reused multiple times. Whether that's a bulk ingredient container or is an area where certain diseases spreading, say Southeast Asia. For example, a truck coming back and forth, the cargo hold on that truck is much more likely to contaminate that raw material as opposed to being in a highly specialized, highly bio secure facility that manufactures a specific product. An amino acid or any other vitamin mineral type of product, to put it into single use bags.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
That bag is sealed, transported to its final destination to be opened and used. I think of that as a little bit different risk profile compared to something that would be in bulk form. Again, going back to the, how could that material become contaminated in the first place?
Scott Sorrell: (
)
So what are some things that we can do to reduce? I heard Chad talk about heat treating and pelleting. What are some other things that we can do to feed to try to reduce the passenger load in the feed?
Dr. Chad Paulk: (
)
Yeah, I think there's all your preventative steps to try to keep it out. If you were to get it in the feed, that's a different story. And the two main things that come to mind that I think are your biggest opportunities are heat treatment. The issue with heat treatment is it depends on the design of your facility. For instance, pet food facilities are designed differently than feed mills. And so the biggest issue is although we may kill the virus in the pelleting process, if we're pulling ambient air back through our pellet cooler, if that virus is in the dust in the facility, are you really just pulling it back into your pellet cooler and recontaminating it. So I think that's something you have to really think about to not build overconfidence in any kind of point in time.
Dr. Chad Paulk: (
)
Mitigation is is there a potential for recontamination? Because what our research has shown us is if you run it through the mixer, it gets in the dust, it's in the facility and it, at least from a RNA or DNA standpoint, you can still find that material there. And so I think your opportunity for recontamination is something you need to think about. The other option is in feed mitigates. Is there something, you know, you could potentially put in the feed that will reduced the survival of those viruses that would last over extended period of time to help reduce that risk.
Scott Sorrell: (
)
And what are you thinking, like formaldehydes, organic acids, those kinds of things?
Dr. Chad Paulk: (
)
Sure. Jordan, if you want to build off of it, you can't.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
Yeah. It's a pretty diverse area. That there's lots of different- formaldehyde certainly has a lot of research behind demonstrating efficacy there. Organic acids, whether it's short chain fatty acids or a little bit longer, medium chain fatty acids, or glycerol monolaurate. So there are lots of different essential oil type products have had demonstrated some efficacy of reducing viral stability. So really there's a number of different products out there that have some data to indicate potential ability to reduce viral stability. But it's a really interesting area given there's some decent data out there. But from the terms of being able to make claims or label indications very, very limited as far as what's out there and what manufacturer, suppliers, folks can say. There's some data in a number of different areas but very, very limited information that can be shared in terms of making potential claims. So a wide diverse area. Lots of different products, I think have a lot of potential to serve and add value by reducing that risk by adding to feed. But it's a tough area and there's a lot of regulatory considerations that you need to tread very lightly with as well.
Scott Sorrell: (
)
So I'd like to transition a little bit to you know, eliminating the risk and how we do that. Before we do that, though. Was there any key elements that we've missed related to what we know about African swine fever transmission?
Dr. Chad Paulk: (
)
I actually want to throw a question at Zach. I think if we think about getting ASF, we've talked a lot about movement. If you're moving things around, that's our issue. The virus isn't going to move itself, it's either going to be some kind of aerosolization or it's going to be humans moving it around. And I think in the swine industry, we're trying to figure out what's the best way to handle this. And I'm really ignorant to what the poultry industry has done, but I've heard some about the national poultry improvement plan and some things that were done in influenza. And I didn't know if Scott or Zach, if y'all had any input on how that plan has influenced the industry and the pros and cons or discussion points that maybe we could learn something from your areas.
Dr. Zack Lowman: (
)
Yeah, well, the NPIP covers several different diseases. They do MGMS, avian influenza, and salmonella forum. And I think it was originally started with salmonella forum, and they've virtually eliminated that in the US. I don't believe there's been a case in a long time. But they they're doing a lot with avian influenza now. So before we market birds from certain plants are certified clean. So before you move birds from the house to the plant, you have to have a clean AI test. And they also do routine monitoring. So it depends on whether you have commercial birds or breeders or parent stock birds as to how often they get tested. But yeah, it's, it's good way to keep an eye on things and make sure all your breeders and everything's free of disease. But, you know, I think it's pretty important and helps helps keep an eye on it. Because especially in ducks and some of your waterfowl stuff, if they have AI, they don't necessarily show any signs. So it's a kind of a way to just keep track on everything. Yeah.
Scott Sorrell: (
)
Guys, so to kind of move toward the end here. What are some of the keys to creating an effective biosecurity program?
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
Yeah, I think Chad mentioned it. I think it's really, really important. I think effective bio-security starts with culture. That doesn't matter what type of SOP you have. You can have the greatest plan in the world. Invest a lot of money in the making it happen and have the best science behind it. If if an institution, if a company doesn't have the appropriate culture, it doesn't matter what you do for bio-security. If those folks don't know how to do it well, know why they're doing it, know how to do it, and have the support of their management and their leaders behind them backing why we need to do this. Dedicating the resources, dedicating the training and having that mindset of biosecurity within the company. Doesn't matter what you do. It's not going to be as effective as it could. So I think that's one of the, it's how you establish that can be very, very challenging. But culture, I think is often overlooked when we think about biosecurity and biosecurity programs. And I think it is the core. It's one of the center components of having an effective biosecurity program within a system.
Dr. Chad Paulk: (
)
And I think to build off of that, to supplement the culture, I think you have to have the investment from the company to make it a process that seems like it's a part of your job and not an add-on that makes your job more difficult. So adding, investing in it to where it's a natural flow is part of the everyday process. You know, this is what we're going to do. This is how we do it and not, oh yeah. You need to also do this on top of your regular routine. I think builds into that culture.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
Yeah. And the way you set up a facility, a feed mill, a system, is really, really is important within that. If you can make a practice convenient where you're incorporating biosecurity, but it's somewhat convenient or less of an inconvenience compared to all other ways of doing it, we can incorporate some of those practices much, much easier as than if it's something completely foreign, adds a lot more work to the day. Something like an entry bench, I think is a real good example of that. You can have a clean, dirty line or a line of separation, but a painted two inch wide white or yellow strip on the floor isn't as much of a barrier as a two foot tall bench that you can't step over. Having this physical barrier, like that is much, much more effective as opposed to a line of separation where you have to sit down, have to take off your shoes, swing over and put them into other boots. It's much more intuitive that way, as opposed to knowing exactly what a yellow line painted on the floor is supposed to indicate from a biosecurity perspective. So those types of things that the culture, the why, how can we incorporate into their daily chore daily tasks without making it an inconvenience and making sure we design our system and design our facility to accommodate that the best we can.
Dr. Chad Paulk: (
)
And I think the follow up too, with the educational piece. The Vietnam dataset was a great example of the company invested in a lab to monitor. And then they took their monitoring and created a story that they could show their employees. Hey, this is why we want you to do this because when you don't, look what happens. And like, they can really create the visual to allow them to see reasoning behind what they're doing. So that follow-up piece, that educational piece to really demonstrate the importance of it, I think, is what really drove the message home. And once they started doing that, you saw the numbers change. I mean, we went from seeing positives to no positives. And it was all because they were able to take the data back, say, Hey, look, we found this. We want to make these changes. They got everybody's buy-in and then they were able to make it happen.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
Yeah. And I'm a veterinarian. So I like diagnostic testing and being able to do that, you can't improve what you don't measure. Another real common phrase, common terminology, that routine monitoring, okay, what's working, where do we have gaps? Where can we improve is really, really important to help continuously improve our process. Biosecurity is not stagnant. It's not the same one day to the next versus one year to the next. As you identify gaps, identify problems, making improvements to how things are done is really, really important. And I'm a big advocate, a big fan of being able to critique and improve some of our diagnostic techniques to be able to further improve the way we do things.
Scott Sorrell: (
)
Guys, circling back to the culture. We were talking with some dairyman last week. They also stress the importance of culture in their businesses. You know, we see it in sports teams. You know, those that have culture can thrive. We see it in businesses, and yet it seems elusive, right. For some companies and teams. So my question is how? How do we go about building these effective cultures within our organizations? And let's, let's make it specific to biosecurity.
Dr. Chad Paulk: (
)
So I I don't have the answer for you right now. And I actually have thought about trying to pull some information together, but I did start reading this book called the Culture Code. And it's this the guy who wrote it, I don't even remember his name, but he went back and he surveyed and met with some of the highest producing most successful- however you want to describe it- teams of people like the Navy Seals versus other branches and some of the most elite NBA teams who shouldn't have been as good as they were. And companies like Apple and, and starts pointing out different things of how you get buy-in from people. And how do you get people, I think it comes back to a sense of trust. How do you get people to trust and feel vulnerable and willing to speak up and provide input and accept criticism, and all these things that go into it. So if you're interested in that area, I'd highly recommend read the book, the Culture Code. It looks at it from a lot of different areas. None of the examples are based on agriculture, at least to the point I've gotten in the book so far. So I think it'd be really interesting to read it as kind of an outside perspective and think about how could some things you could do relate back to your day-to-day operations.
Scott Sorrell: (
)
Yeah. Great comments, Chad. I think that's maybe something we need to look into for a future webinar and podcast. Zack, you were going to mention something.
Dr. Zack Lowman: (
)
I was going to say, I've worked with several commercial farms and develop an SOP biosecurity protocols, and they seem to, you get a lot more buy in if you actually make the people involved with coming up with it, instead of just saying, here's the sheet, follow it because then they're like, oh, well, we can't do this because. And I've had a lot more success with that, is involving them in the creation of the plan.
Dr. Chad Paulk: (
)
I want to follow up comment on that, Zach you're right. One of the biggest issues in a feed mill is covering the receiving pit. And it seems like an extremely easy thing, but it's a pain when you have all these trucks coming and going and pulling a huge mat across the floor. And we've had a couple of companies with multiple mills and they'll say, go design it, whatever you need to do, design whatever makes your life the easiest, and we'll support you. And they've almost kind of created this internal competition of which mill could create the best most automatic receiving pit covers to take the load off of them. And they've come up with some pretty cool designs
Scott Sorrell: (
)
Guys, as we kind of get ready to wrap it up here. Jordan, I wanted to go into something where you delineate the difference between prevention and intervention and the importance of both. Can you just elaborate on that a little bit?
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
Yeah. And Chad alluded to some of those concepts well, which we'll build upon a little bit right here. Biosecurity is not, there's no magic silver bullet in biosecurity. At least nothing I've ever found. And I think we can be looking for a long time and not find that. So really it's a series of, I like to think about it on the concept of intervention and prevention. There's another way that's fairly intuitive to think about it. Biosecurity is a series of hurdles. In order for a pathogen to get into contact with animals, it's got to go across this track. But if we put a bunch of hurdles in that pathway, the ability for that pathogen to get into contact with animals is much, much less. So some of those are prevention. What can we do for the ingredients and the materials that come into contact with our pigs, whether that's feed, whether that's employee clothing, employee shoes, anything that comes into contact with our pigs, what can we do in the steps leading up to that to reduce that those surfaces, that feed, those ingredients from getting contaminated with ASF to begin with. That's the prevention piece.
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
However, if we add another hurdle to it, we're doing several steps to prevent it from happening, but for some reason, if those steps aren't effective and ASF does get it into that material, what then can we do on the tail side to help reduce that risk further? Whether it's thermal processing, an active feed mitigant type of product, Whether we want to dig into that data and understand that data and implement with that in our system. So biosecurity is a series of hurdles. A lot of those hurdles are prevention, avoiding that contamination in the first place. And then in the backside intervention, if it does get there, what can we do to reduce that risk further? And again, thermal processing, active mitigation with a variety of different chemical compounds. Or holding time is another one that we know that viruses naturally degrade over time. So if we have a product or an ingredient and we hold it for a certain period of time, we reduce the ability that virus to cause an infection if provided to pigs. So really prevention and intervention woven together really important. They form a series of hurdles within our biosecurity chain.
Scott Sorrell: (
)
Very well, gentlemen, they just called last call. And with that, I'd like you to- We've had a great discussion today. We've covered quite a few topics. I'd like you to kind of narrow it down to maybe one to three key things that our audience should take away from the conversation today. And Zach, I'm going to start with you.
Dr. Zack Lowman: (
)
I definitely think that we need to realize this is a real issue, or could it be a real issue for the US when it gets here. We need to be diligent not to bring it here and be strict on biosecurity and training.
Scott Sorrell: (
)
Excellent. Chad?
Dr. Chad Paulk: (
)
I think that the big thing is, is we need to take what we know and try to get everybody's support around it and get everybody working together. Although, a lot of times we seem to be competing against each other when it comes to something like transboundary disease. I think we have to figure out how to compromise from company to company to work together to make this best for the whole US and understand how it affects everything globally, but also here on the home turf.
Scott Sorrell: (
)
And finally. Jordan?
Dr. Jordan Gebhardt: (
)
Really great summary. And one of the big things that I think we sometimes get a little bit worried with is letting the goal of perfection get in the way of making any progress. We've got a facility that's 50 or 100. It's not designed perfectly. It's difficult to cover pits, different areas. But those are some areas that those hurdles specifically, we may not be able to incorporate, but let's do something. Anything is better than nothing. And just because it's not perfect, doesn't mean it can't reduce our risk. So I think as an industry, it's really important to keep that in mind that we're one group. If something like ASF here into the US, it doesn't just affect the company that that disease was found in their facilities. It affects everybody. So working together as an industry is really, really important. And a lot of times getting the ball rolling, doing something is much, much, much better than doing nothing. So I think that's an important piece to keep in mind as an industry.
Scott Sorrell: (
)
Yeah, well said, Jordan. Gentlemen this has been a lot of fun, I appreciate you guys coming in tonight to speak with us. Appreciate the insightful conversation and practical tips. This is such an important topic. As we look to improve security for our feed and total food systems. I also want to take time to thank our loyal listeners for stopping by here. Once again at the Real Science Exchange. Hopefully you heard something new. Hopefully you have something you can take back with you to impact your business. And hopefully you had a little bit of fun along the way. If you like what you heard, please remember to hit the five star rating on your way out and leave us a glowing review. Those are always welcome. Don't forget to request a Real Science Exchange T-Shirt. You just need to like or subscribe to the Real Science Exchange and send us a screenshot along with your address and t-shirt size to anh.marketing.com. Our Real Science Lecture Series of webinars continues with new topics every few weeks. Visit Balchem.com/realscience to see upcoming events and past topics. We hope to see you next time here at the Real Science Exchange, where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends.