Politico | US research gaps hurt hunt for African swine fever vaccine
- Research into African swine fever was halted by the US Agriculture Department in 2004 after 15 years and wasn’t resumed until 2010
- The disease now poses a serious threat to US pork production after emerging in China in August 2018
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Oma Seddiq on politico.com on October 28, 2019.
Rock was lead scientist of an US Department of Agriculture research team trying to find a vaccine that would protect pigs against the deadly and incurable disease. That year, after 15 years of research, his team was disbanded, the victim of budgetary moves triggered by limited resources. USDA did not resume research on African swine fever until 2010, and a vaccine is still years away from becoming reality.
Experts believe scientific challenges are primarily responsible for complicating development of a vaccine. But the animal agriculture industry points to low levels of federal funding for animal disease research as a hindrance – highlighting criticism that the federal government’s inadequate commitment to supporting agricultural research hampers producers’ ability to respond to emerging threats like African swine fever.
“I do think that we’ve probably not funded this at the level that it should’ve been funded at historically and, probably, even now,” said Rock, who left USDA after the African swine fever programme was halted, and is now a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
