NAHLN
The Idaho State Department of Agriculture announced that the Animal Health Laboratory in Boise has officially been accepted as a member of the National Animal Health Laboratory Network. The membership means additional essential animal health services can happen here in Idaho, instead of having to be sent to laboratories in other states.
“If you saw what we had before we had this building… just imagine 1950s high school chemistry classroom, like it has been such a huge leap forward.”
“So one of the big tools we use is it's called cross polarization light microscopy.”
“Once everything is loaded, these plates in here they hold 96 samples… and then at the end of the process you get the purified DNA sequence.”
On July 25th the Idaho State Department of Agriculture announced that their Animal Health Laboratory, which is located here inside the Diagnostic Laboratory building in Boise, has officially been accepted as a member of the National Animal Health Laboratory Network, or NAHLN.
“Which is a group of approximately 60 labs located around the United States that are animal disease diagnostic laboratories that prioritize high consequence diseases and outbreaks throughout the country. So we're very excited that we're part of that group now,” said
This is the first time an Idaho lab has earned this designation. NAHLN is a nationally coordinated system of federal, state and university labs that support things like early detection testing, disease surveillance, outbreak response and protecting the national food supply and public health.
“To me and the rest of our crew, it's it's just been a huge accomplishment. You know, it started almost 10 years ago when we thought about becoming a NAHLN member, but our previous facility wasn't really adequate. It didn't have the proper safety procedures or infrastructure in place. So around 3 1/2 years ago, we moved into this facility. That allowed us to get more serious about pursuing a NAHLN membership and then once we moved in here we started building a more robust quality assurance program in preparation of getting audited by the USDA NAHLN folks. And in June of this year of 25 we finally were approved.
I think it validates the level of quality of our operation and it also allows us to perform tests that you know only NAHLN members are allowed to perform like avian influenza and Newcastle disease (poultry), or maybe in the future chronic wasting disease (deer, elk, moose) or scrapie (sheep & goats). It's going to open some doors for us in the future,” said Salmi.
One of the big advantages of membership is being able to conduct more tests locally instead of sending them to labs in other parts of the country.
“Anytime you can offer a service, whether it be for food safety, diagnostic screening, control of the spread of disease in livestock, if you can offer that service locally as opposed to having to outsource it where I know the people that are performing the test, I can have immediate access to have a discussion about what are the nuances that we need to account for, and then get those results back to the general public, the veterinarian, the producer, as fast as possible, that is hands down the best formula for success in the laboratory,” said Dr. Scott Leibsle, the State Veterinarian of Idaho.
They can also now test for things like the quagga mussel, an invasive species discovered in the Snake River in 2023. Samples then had to be sent to a lab in Florida for testing, but now:
“In 2025 we opened our own quagga microscopy lab to start doing that testing in house in Idaho. Instead of sending these samples to Florida,” said Salmi.
The staff showed us an example of a tiny quagga mussel.
“Right now, we are looking at a quagga mussel veliger. So it's the larval stage, it's right now it's the free floating stage,” said Michelle Jakaitis, an ISDA Bacteriologist and Parasitologist.
“and so there's one right there. And so very circular, very rounded. They're very, very small, even as adults.”
In some of the labs you might notice artwork adorning the walls that is very animal specific, all done by the staff.
“Within the Animal Health lab, we have the brucellosis lab. We have the serology lab, molecular bacteriology, and then kind of sub labs, including parasitology. Now the quagga lab and avian influenza lab,” said Salmi.
“The menu of tests that we offer now is growing every year,” said Salmi.
“All of these decisions are really started at the industry level, what do the citizens of Idaho need? What do the livestock industries of Idaho need? And then how are we able to accommodate those demands in a cost-effective manner?” said Leibsle.
In fiscal year 25 over 429,000 tests were performed by the Animal Health Lab, the highest number in the last 10 years.
“I think the support from the industry and the services that we're able to give back because we're able to accommodate cost effective and timely results has definitely fostered an environment of growth,” said Leibsle.
As a NAHLN member the lab is also eligible for increased federal funding for operations and further development and growth.
