PARTNER FEATURE ▶▶▶
8 lessons learnt to help beat ASF
The fundamentals of African Swine Fever have hardly changed over the last three decades. The big difference today is that we know considerably more about how to combat it. Here are eight lessons learnt to help fight the disease.
BY DR KLAUS DEPNER, VIROLOGIST, FRIEDRICH-LOEFFLER-INSTITUT, GERMANY T
he fundamentals of the African Swine Fever (ASF) dis- ease picture have hardly changed in the last three decades. The big difference today is that there is con- siderably more known about how to combat it.
Some key points of ASF stay the same. Infection still almost always leads to the death of the pig. Within an infected farm the virus remains a slow spreader – no more highly conta- gious now than in the past. Spreading to another site contin- ues to be largely by people on their clothing and vehicles or in contaminated feed and water.
For the first time in 30 years, however, Europe saw a return of the virus in 2007 with an outbreak in Georgia. The subse- quent years have taught important lessons to the string of European countries that have become affected. Not least, we are now much better informed about how to stop transfer of the virus to domestic pigs from infected wild boar in fields and forests as well as about clearing infection from specific zones.
1. Double fencing helps For example, rules from 30 years ago in Namibia indicated
that double fencing pigs should protect from infection. In Af- rica it was warthogs and ticks that carried the risk. In Europe it is the populations of wild boar. But the value of fencing has been recognised again, not only at the farm perimeter, but also at national borders where solid fences have replaced earlier electric ones and where defined areas called white zones have been encircled so that infected wild boar can be removed by hunting or capture.
2. Good biosecurity is essential At the local level, there is no choice: practising good bi-
osecurity is essential to contain the ASF virus within the wild boar population and not let it spread to farms. The fact that it is a slow mover should help us here. Unlike, say, Classical Swine Fever (hog cholera) and Foot-and-Mouth Disease (hoof-and-mouth) which travel quickly between farms because those pathogens are carried through the air, ASF relies on physical contact to reach sites and to transfer between pigs.
3. Humans play an essential role Because ASF is a very slow disease, if producers do everything
Proper fencing, preferably double, helps to keep out ASFv. 24 ▶ PIG PROGRESS | Volume 37, No. 2, 2021
properly, they can be confident about eradicating it on their farm before it escapes to neighbouring farms. This virus is not highly contagious, and therefore producers have time to take the necessary measures. At least in domestic pigs, ASF is a disease where producers can clearly protect themselves be- cause, at the end of the day, it is humans who facilitate infec- tion. In a backyard system, that might mean the pigs have been given leftover food from the kitchen or forage from a contaminated field. At a large farm the virus may be in feed or water.
PHOTO: VINCENT TER BEEK
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