BioSec Bob here on Sunday, April 19, 2026 — let’s get right into it.
Starting with poultry, Morning Ag Clips is reporting that highly pathogenic avian influenza has been confirmed in a backyard flock in Pierce County, Georgia. This marks another detection in the state’s commercial perimeter, and state agriculture officials have already initiated standard containment protocols. The affected operation is under quarantine while epidemiologists work to trace potential exposure pathways.
On the swine side, Farmers Guardian is looking at the federal ban on feeding kitchen scraps to pigs — a regulation that trips up a lot of smaller producers and homesteaders who assume it’s just common sense to recycle table waste. The law exists because of disease transmission risk, particularly the threat of introducing pathogens like African swine fever through contaminated feed. Cooking scraps doesn’t eliminate the risk either; the FDA maintains the blanket prohibition regardless of temperature history.
Biosecurity itself has become absolutely critical now, according to reporting from Food For Mzansi. Pork producers can no longer treat biosecurity as one checkbox among many — it’s moved to the center of business viability. Operations that don’t have locked-down protocols around feed sourcing, worker access, and equipment sanitation are seeing real economic consequences, either through disease losses or through market access restrictions that buyers are increasingly imposing as standard terms.
Out of North Korea this morning, DailyNK reports that African swine fever is resurging across the country in 2026. The disease had been largely contained for several years, but new outbreaks have erupted in multiple provinces, forcing authorities to reimpose movement restrictions and culling operations. The resurgence is putting strain on an already fragile national pork supply.
On a brighter note internationally, Taiwan News is reporting that Taiwan has regained its African swine fever-free status. The island lost that designation in 2020 after an outbreak, but years of rigorous surveillance, strict import controls, and biosecurity enforcement have finally paid off. The restoration opens pathways for Taiwan’s pork exports to resume with countries that require ASF-free certification.
And down in Delaware, First State Update is covering a major poultry infrastructure loss — a chicken house fire in Harrington that caused over a million dollars in damage. The operation’s lost capacity will ripple through local supply chains, and investigators are still determining the cause.
Keep your biosecurity systems audit-ready; the bar’s only getting higher.