African swine fever a threat for European Union

December 1, 2010 — 

African swine fever, currently present in Southern Russia will also be a threat for the European Union. This is according to Sergey Yushin from the Russian National Meat association in Berlin.

Every year, the disease spread 260 kilometres to the west, Yushin said at the World Pork Event, organised by Dutch genetics company Topigs. He said that Russia underestimated the problem. "It took me two years to convince the Russian authorities to solve the problem with the disease" Yushin commented. Now Russia is spending 250 to 300 million dollars to eradicate the disease. Political pressure from the EU would be more than welcome, Yushin said.

There are no vaccines against African swine fever, a disease which is now endemic and mostly present in wild boars. "The solution lies for 90 to 95% with the Russians", explains Yushin. The Russian pig industry is marked by backyard farming and small, old farms. The discipline among pig farmers to fight the disease is low, concluded Yushin.

[An outbreak of African swine fever has hit Krasnodar and is threatening to spread throughout the southern Russian region, regional governor Alexander Tkachev said Wednesday, the regional government's press service reported. The epidemic threatens all the region's 1.1 million pigs, which equates to over 6% of the Russia's total pig population. Tkachev said the virus had already spread to five districts, and there was a danger it would spread throughout the region. "We risk losing an industry which in the last few years has received considerable state and private investment," he said. "Financial losses will be in the tens of billions of rubles."-Dow Jones]

Source: PigProgress.net, November 25, 2010