Hoosier Ag Today 

NPPC Board Member Jackie Ponder Discusses Push for African Swine Fever Prevention

Kevin
.
Jackie Ponder from Greenwood, who co-owns Bowman Family Holdings, Inc. based in Indianapolis, has recently been elected to the board of directors of the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC). Photo courtesy of NPPC.

As the poultry industry is being hit with a Bird Flu outbreak, America’s pork producers are sounding the alarm about preventing an African Swine Fever (ASF) outbreak.

“It has been discovered in the Dominican Republic, which is way too close to the United States,” says Jackie Ponder from Johnson County, who is co-owner and Chief Legal Officer of Bowman Family Holdings, Inc., which manages 23,000 sows, markets 200,000 pigs annually, and farms 4,000 acres of corn and soybeans on farm locations throughout Johnson, Clay, Vigo, Pike, and Greene counties in Indiana. She’s also one of the newest members of the board of directors with the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC).

She tells Hoosier Ag Today that if pigs in the U.S. were ever to test positive for African Swine Fever, it would have a crippling effect on our ag economy.

“It’s scary. That’s why we are pushing to renew and expand a lot of items for the animal health portion of the Farm Bill, including  the National Animal Health Lab Network, the National Animal Disease Preparedness and Response Program, the National Veterinary Stockpile, the National Animal Vaccine and Veterinary Countermeasure Bank—these are things that we need strengthened so that if anything does happen we can react quickly,” says Ponder.

In addition to pressing lawmakers for more funding for research, Ponder adds that more needs to be done to prevent people from bringing in infected pork from outside the U.S.—which includes permanent funding in the next Farm Bill for the Beagle Brigade.

“Some of the things people bring in, it’s not for nefarious reasons. They go back home and they visit family and, ‘Nobody makes this dish just like Mama makes it,’ and so she puts it in a Tupperware container or whatever and they put it in their luggage. The thing about the beagles when you see them at the airport going through luggage is they’re not looking for drugs. They’re looking for meat. I saw a demonstration at Pork Expo last year in Iowa, and it’s fascinating to see them. They can tell if it’s pork or any other meat. They alert to it, and people don’t understand that bringing that raw meat into the United States can bring disease,” she says.

Ponder was recently in Washington, D.C. with the National Pork Producers Council as part of their 2025 Spring Legislative Action Conference on April 9-10 to discuss policies impacting U.S. pork producers.

CLICK BELOW to hear Hoosier Ag Today’s radio news report.

 

.
Jackie Ponder, who has recently been elected to the board of directors for the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC). She is also from Greenwood, Indiana, and is co-owner and Chief Legal Officer of Bowman Family Holdings, Inc. based in Indianapolis.