The PORK Podcast

Rooted in Resilience: The Non-Traditional Journey of Swine Veterinarian Dr. Anna Forseth

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 20:27:35 GMT

Dr. Anna Forseth didn’t just follow a path; she carved one. While many people associate Montana with Yellowstone and cattle, Forseth grew up with a much different perspective.

The daughter of two successful pork producers, Bruce and Marie Samson, her family operated Samson Family Farm, a 300-sow, farrow-to-finish confinement hog farm in the southwest part of the state. They marketed about 5,500 pigs a year to packing plants in Twin Falls, Idaho, and Modesto, Calif.

She and her five siblings grew up with a deep appreciation for the family farm, 4-H and the great outdoors. So, how did this Montana native find herself serving 60,000 U.S. pork producers as the director of animal health for the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC)?

A Non-Traditional Journey to National Policy

“Nothing about my path is traditional,” Forseth points out.

While attending Montana State University, she interned with the National Pork Board. During that time, she worked with the science and technology team where she was exposed to a unique way of serving the industry as a veterinarian. She then went to Colorado State University for veterinary school.

“My husband Rocky and I got married during my fourth year of vet school, or should I say ‘our’ fourth year of vet school,” Forseth laughs. “That’s not because he is a vet, but because it’s hard to leave vet school at school. I brought a lot of it home and he was right there in the trenches with me. In fact, my parents gave me a beautiful saddle when I graduated from vet school, but they also gave him one because they thought he deserved one, too.”

Anna Forseth met her husband, Rocky, in an undergrad beef management class. He came from a long line of cattlemen and cattlewomen, and she hailed from Gallatin County, drove a Subaru, and much preferred the pig barn at the county fair over the steer barn. “How this worked is still a mystery to some, but it created quite a team,” she says.

(Anna Forseth)

As a new veterinarian, she went to work for the Swine Medicine Education Center at Iowa State University. She also spent some time working with Smithfield before being hired by the Montana State Veterinarian’s Office in 2018.

Heading back west was important to the young couple who wanted to be closer to family. In 2022, the opportunity to work for NPPC allowed her a unique opportunity as the director of animal health for America’s pig farmers.

Although her roles have changed over the years, her focus has remained the same.

“When I thought about visiting a farm, it was about helping the pigs so that I could help the producer,” Forseth says. “What could I do for the producer that they couldn’t do for themselves? I would often, by default, be helping the pigs, but my focus is always on the producer.”

A Voice for the Producer

Although she no longer sees pigs on a daily basis, she talks to farmers often about their pigs. She points out that her role allows her to help farmers in a way that they can’t do for themselves because they are busy caring for their pigs and raising a protein that so many people in the world rely on.

“I am the bridge between policy and the producer,” Forseth says. “I’m not necropsying pigs and submitting samples to the diagnostic lab anymore, but I’m representing the industry domestically and internationally. I’m so proud to be doing that on their behalf.”

When she started in 2022, almost all of her time was spent on preparedness and response planning for African swine fever, post detection of ASF in the Dominican Republic. She continues to spend time on ASF response planning, though the diseases of focus have expanded since she began working for NPPC. Lately, she’s been engaged in foot-and-mouth disease, highly pathogenic avian influenza and New World screwworm planning.

“I think foot-and-mouth disease scares me the most because of its potential impact on multiple species,” she says. “Even if the swine industry were to manage the disease, we would be dependent on other domestic species’ ability to manage it. Remember that particular virus affects cloven-hooved animals, to include wild cervids and feral swine.”

During Forseth’s time at NPPC, annual funding for the National Animal Disease Preparedness and Response Plan (NADPRP) has surged from $18 million to $70 million. She currently serves on the NADPRP advisory board, ensuring these historic resources are strategically deployed to protect producers through enhanced state engagement and emergency readiness.

NPPC has also secured other legislative and funding victories, including the passage of the Beagle Brigade Act and the transition of the US SHIP program to the USDA. Central to these efforts is the “three-legged stool” of animal health—funding the national laboratory network, the vaccine bank, and the veterinary stockpile.

Rooted in Resilience

When she’s not working on behalf of pig farmers, Forseth keeps busy supporting her husband on their registered SimAngus cattle ranch and caring for their two young kids.

“It’s one big, but fun, balancing act,” she says. “I enjoy everything I’m doing, from being a mom to being a rancher’s wife to being a veterinarian for NPPC. I’m thankful for the example I had with my mom, who raised six kids and supported the farm. When work needed to be done and someone needed to step up, that someone was always her. While she was balancing all of our lives, I was watching and learning.”

Forseth is quick to point out that she learned a lot from her dad, too. He passed away in 2023 after a courageous battle with multiple myeloma.

“I will always remember him as a fighter, even before his cancer diagnosis, but certainly after,” Forseth says. “Despite pain and his prognosis, he stayed optimistic and focused on others.”

She vividly remembers the day she found out that he had cancer during a routine morning drive to a histology lab in vet school.

“I cried so hard on my way to school that I gave myself a bloody nose,” she says. “I got myself into class and sat down in front of the microscope. I hadn’t looked at the schedule for the day. To my surprise, we were looking at cancer cells – that was salt in the wound for me that morning. After class, I asked the professor to tell me what she knew about multiple myeloma.”

When she got back to her car, she called her dad and told him she was going to take the rest of the day off because she didn’t feel like sitting in a lecture hall in light of the news he just shared.

“He asked, ‘Why in the world would you do that?’” Forseth says. “He tried to perk me up by telling me about all the great advances. He just kept talking about the science and how cool it was. I loved that so much – it was never about him, even on his hardest days, it was always about somebody else.”

Unique Times Call for Unique Leadership

Forseth gets her passion for putting others first from her dad. It fuels her decisions every day as she strives to represent U.S. pig farmers from coast to coast.

Whether she’s navigating global meetings with the World Organization for Animal Health or tackling feral swine management with her trademark “Montana grit,” Forseth’s unique perspective is an invaluable asset. She is a reminder of how agriculture can be strengthened by those who take non-conventional paths.

“We can’t sustain this industry on a ‘how it has been done’ mentality,” she says. “Today’s consumer is different. The industry structure is different. The workforce is different. The policy pressures are very different. It’s going to take new and unique ideas to address new and sometimes unique challenges.”

Discover more about Forseth’s journey by watching “The PORK Podcast” on YouTube or by listening to it anywhere podcasts are found.

Juggling Glass Balls: How Veterinarian Micah Jansen Prioritizes What Matters Most

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 14:55:49 GMT

“The key to juggling is to know that some of the balls you have in the air are made of plastic and some are made of glass. And if you drop a plastic ball, it bounces, no harm done. If you drop a glass ball, it shatters, so you have to know which balls are glass and which are plastic and prioritize catching the glass ones.”

When Micah Jansen, DVM, first heard the glass ball theory by author Nora Roberts, she remembers instantly connecting with it.

“As working moms, we have a lot of things we are balancing,” Jansen said on The PORK Podcast . “This concept helps me remember that I must differentiate the glass balls from the rubber balls. If I drop a rubber ball, like failing to get a deliverable to a co-worker on Friday, I can get it to them on Monday. But my daughter’s Christmas program – that’s a glass ball I cannot drop because it won’t happen again.”

She says understanding the difference between the two has helped her focus and be more deliberate as a working mom. It’s also helped her learn how to prioritize and say no at times.

“When I start getting upset about not getting something done or not being somewhere I wanted to be, I have had to learn to say, ‘Okay, even though I’m upset, this is a rubber ball. It is not the end of the world if I can’t accomplish this because I’m catching this glass ball over here.’”

As a swine tech services veterinarian with Zoetis, the struggle is real at times. No two days are alike for Jansen who has been with the company since 2015. From helping people understand how different products work and troubleshooting with clients on swine health issues to assisting with research projects and hosting student interns, Jansen has learned that her role requires some juggling.

Fortunately, she enjoys the challenge.

The Face of Veterinary Medicine is Changing

“The swine industry is constantly changing,” she says. “It’s becoming more integrated, and with those changes in structure, has also come a change in what swine medicine looks like.”

More production systems today have staff veterinarians who work full time and focus on their system’s pigs. Veterinary clinics are becoming more consolidated, too. There has also been a major shift from mostly men to mostly women entering practice.

She believes this may be another reason why the structure of swine medicine has changed, too. Women are multi-taskers at heart and as more women step into veterinarian roles, Jansen says they have sought out how to find balance between their roles at work and at home as mothers so they could do both well.

“I’m still the only woman in the room sometimes,” Jansen says. “But, I’ve never wanted that to define me. I try to focus on what I know without a doubt to be true and also be humble. If I don’t know the answer to something, it doesn’t mean I can’t find it. I’ve always been somebody who would rather not know the answer and come back to someone than to tell them something that’s wrong.”

Jansen spends a lot of time working with students through internships and other research programs. She says they’ve taught her a lot along the way. She is impressed how younger generations are realizing sooner in life that you only have so much time to devote to certain things like work or school, while also taking care of your mental health and well-being.

“They are better at saying, ‘OK, you want me to complete this task, but I know I have exams next week so I can’t commit to getting it done today. However, I will get to it as soon as I’ve completed my other exams,’” Jansen says. “Never in a million years would I have ever done that! But I admire them for being honest with themselves.”

Hard Decisions

A big part of being a great swine veterinarian is making hard decisions and offering clients holistic support.

Terry Moeller, a Zoetis strategic account manager and colleague, says, “Micah always strives to do the right thing when it comes to pig health, and she has extensive knowledge of critical financials that yield a strong return on investment for our customers.”

Her grasp of the swine industry and understanding of the decisions producers face every day have helped her be successful in her role.

“The decisions that we help our clients make are going to impact essentially whether or not they can feed their families,” Jansen says. “Regardless of if you’re in private practice or if you are a staff veterinarian working for a production system, you constantly must keep in mind the other piece of it that adds up fast. When we make a decision to treat an animal, it’s not just a single animal. You have to take it times 1,000, times 10,000, or times 5 million, depending on what decision you’re making.”

Abbey Briscoe, a veterinarian with Harding Veterinary Services, says this is one of the things she admires about Jansen.

“Micah doesn’t settle for ‘easy.’ She doesn’t have her mind made up with an answer to a problem for a client and genuinely takes her time to listen to everything surrounding an issue, gathering all sides and information before thoughtfully answering,” Briscoe says. “She will follow up with additional advice and options once she has had more time to digest and gather outside expert feedback on a case. She honestly wants her clients to have the best possible insight to an issue.”

One of the not-so-easy roles Jansen plays at Zoetis is serving as a go-to-person on influenza. She admits she actually enjoys studying influenza.

“I think people don’t like flu because it can be really overwhelming,” she points out. “Part of the reason it becomes so complicated is that the influenza virus is so good at changing. We continue to see changes in the virus over time, and what makes it even more nerve-wracking is that interface between pigs and people.”

Biosecurity is key to fighting influenza. She says it’s a constant challenge of knowing what you should do next when it comes to animal husbandry, pig movement or vaccination.

“And then what do we do about caregivers? Even if they’re sick, they want to come into work because they want to be able to feed their families. But at the same time, how do we decide when a sick employee could be putting that population of pigs at risk?” she says. “There are so many moving pieces.”

If she could share one message with the industry now, it’s a simple, but profound one.

“Let’s make sure we’re doing things the right way,” Jansen says. “We know the right way. We love data in the swine industry, and we always talk about how it drives our decisions. Let’s make sure that’s not just something we’re saying. Let’s make protocol decisions based on that concept and doing everything we can to get better.”

Jansen shares more about swine health, her days at the University of Illinois and her passion for team roping and more on The PORK Podcast. You can watch it here on YouTube or listen anywhere podcasts are found.

Watch more episodes here.

Is a World Without PRRS Possible? Two Veterinarians Say ‘Yes’

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 17:34:13 GMT

Everyone experiences pain in life. Sometimes, if the pain is excruciating enough, it results in transformational change. The current pain level of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) in the U.S. is extreme, says swine veterinarians Scott Dee and Gordon Spronk. That’s why they are calling for transformational change in a viewpoint article in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association .

Dee and Spronk say it’s time to create a world without PRRS.

“We aren’t in the spring of our careers anymore,” Spronk said during an exclusive on The PORK Podcast. “We’re in the fall of our careers, and maybe it’s time to be reflective and hopefully speak into and encourage the next generation of pork producers that their life can be better. And not only their life, but the life of the pig, will be better if we had a world without PRRS.”

Why Now?
For more than 38 years, Spronk and Dee have been working side by side to fight PRRS. Why should the industry move to eradicate PRRS now?

“I have a long history as a veterinarian, but my family also raises pigs. We’re in the middle of a generational transfer,” Spronk explains. “It’s important for the next generation who will take over this operation to be encouraged about the potential of productivity, and what could clearly be achieved if we didn’t have PRRS circulating in our sow farms.”

The U.S. swine herd is currently dealing with variants such as PRRSV L1C.5 and L1C.2 that are spreading rapidly. These variants are more infectious than previous isolates, as well as highly pathogenic.

“These highly pathogenic isolates are moving around in areas between wean-to-finish barns, meaning that you can have your sow farm negative produce a group of negative pigs, place them negative, but then they become infected with lateral transmission,” Spronk says. “And our national swine herd mortality is to the level that it’s concerning from a productivity standpoint and competitiveness with other international competitors, namely Brazil.”

Field observations indicate pre-weaning mortality levels ranging from 56% to 100% post-infection, resulting in losses of $1 million to $3 million per 10-week period post-weaning, not to mention compromised animal welfare and compromised mental health among workers.

“The thing that really gets me about this one is the welfare aspect,” Dee says. “It’s the suffering that the animals and the people working on the farms go through. It’s worse than I’ve ever seen it. We know that only pigs can get PRRS, but people suffer when they watch animals die and work so hard to treat them. That to me, is a welfare aspect, along with the economics and the production issues that make this situation so difficult right now.”

What Does A World Without PRRS Look Like?
Dee says there are examples in negative barns of what a world without PRRS looks like – higher productivity, higher health pigs are more fun to raise.

“It’s a flourishing U.S. national herd with reduced antibiotic use, lower mortality, predictable productivity, and with satisfied employees working in a welfare-friendly environment,” Dee says. “In other words, a more profitable and competitive national industry for generations to come.”

Dee believes this could lead to freedom from other domestic diseases such as porcine epidemic diarrhea virus and strengthened prevention of foreign animal disease.

When Dee served as president of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians in 2005-2006, he called for national elimination of PRRS.

“It was the right thing to call for but it was ahead of its time,” Dee points out. “We were missing two things. We were missing a clear understanding of area spread. How do we prevent the virus from moving from farm to farm? We know a lot more about that. The other is US SHIP. We didn’t have a united platform that we could all work together on to kind of collectively come together with decisions as an organization rather than just an individual. Now it’s time to have that conversation again.”

Dee and Spronk outline six non-negotiable practices the industry needs to adapt to survive.

Non-negotiable #1: The U.S. swine industry must eliminate PRRS virus.
The successful disease elimination of pseudorabies, classical swine fever and foot-and-mouth disease can be applied to build strategies to eliminate PRRS virus from our national swine herd.

“PRRS costs our industry approximately $1.2 billion per year. Global competitors like Brazil, Romania, Chile and Denmark have either successfully sustained freedom from PRRS virus or are striving to achieve/have achieved national elimination. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to compete in the global marketplace,” Spronk says.

Non-negotiable #2: The U.S. swine industry must improve its biosecurity.
The U.S. must continue to raise the level of biosecurity across the national herd, through an evidence-based approach known as Next-Generation Biosecurity (NGB), Dee says. NGB targets prevention of viral entry into the breeding herd (bio-exclusion) via direct routes (pigs and semen) and indirect routes, i.e., mechanical routes, aerosols and feed.

“The same concept must be applied to the wean-to-finish sector through both the practice of bio-exclusion to protect standing growing pigs and the practice of bio-containment to protect the region,” he says. “This latter point stresses the need for strategies designed to reduce viral excretion from infected populations, such as the use of vaccines and the participation in voluntary animal health programs.”

Non-negotiable #3: The U.S. swine industry must restrict the use of live virus inoculation.
Live virus inoculation (LVI) involves the harvesting of farm-specific viruses through injection of serum from viremic animals to induce homologous immunity in susceptible animals.

“This practice is neither safe or efficacious, as the use of LVI in sows induces pregnancy loss across all stages of gestation, and does not produce sterilizing immunity,” Dee says. “In addition, when evaluating the productivity of PRRS-virus-infected breeding herds vaccinated with modified live virus vaccines (MLV) versus those administered LVI, MLV herds returned to baseline production significantly sooner and had significantly less total reproductive loss, versus herds given LVI.”

Routine application of LVI in pregnant females should be avoided and limited to a safer use as a one-time application to stable population of non-pregnant replacement gilts housed in a biosecure gilt development facility during a PRRS virus elimination program, Dee adds.

Non-negotiable #4: The U.S. industry must change its behavior regarding the movement of PRRSV-infected pigs.
Between-farm movements of animals and transportation vehicles enhance regional spread of PRRS virus, with vehicles transporting pigs to farms being responsible for most infections. To control the spread of the virus at the regional level, they are calling for change in how PRRSV-infected pigs are moved between sites.

“The co-mingling of infected and non-infected pigs at weaning must be avoided, infected pigs should not be placed near naïve populations of negative sow farm populations or standing growing pigs, and transport vehicles should be sanitized between movements,” Spronk says. “This is simple common sense. We know what we need to do, we just must do it.”

Non-negotiable #5: The U.S. industry needs an improved genetic response to PRRS virus.
Exciting advances are underway in the field of swine genetics pertaining to PRRS virus, Dee says. One approach is the editing of the CD-163 region of the macrophage to prevent viral infection at the cellular level, while the other involves genetic selection to improve the general immune response and robustness of the pig following challenge.

“Each approach has its own strengths and limitations,” Dee says. “I think we do have to temper our enthusiasm that there’s not a silver bullet for this disease. One size doesn’t fit all.”

Non-negotiable #6: The U.S. swine industry needs to participate in US SHIP.
Modeled after the National Poultry Improvement Plan and originally based on mitigation of African swine fever and classical swine fever, the US Swine Health Improvement Plan (US SHIP) has the ability to stimulate collaboration and reduce the impact of domestic diseases such as PRRS virus, they say.

Prior to US SHIP, a platform like this was not available, Dee says. However, the industry can now use this to communicate and collaborate more effectively.

“We are clearly ready,” Dee says. “There’s no question in my mind, after 38 years dealing with this thing, we are so ready. It hurts to sit still. Now is exactly the time to take all the information, all the collaboration that’s coming, and get going, because we know what we need to do. We just have to do it.”

Watch their exclusive interview on The PORK Podcast here or listen anywhere podcasts are found.

Read the viewpoint in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association.