Picture a finisher barn six weeks out from market. Salmonella surveillance in pigs usually starts with the least pleasant job on the list: catching pigs, taking rectal samples, pooling them. and keeping the chain of identification straight across a building with a thousand animals in it. It is slow, and on most farms it is the reason surveillance does not happen at all. So the appeal of hanging a rope in a pen and letting pigs chew on it is obvious. A 2026 study tested that idea across 51 pens at three commercial finisher sites, taking paired oral fluid and pooled fecal samples from every pen and running both through…