European pig industry warned over potential ASF spread
Speaking at a conference to discuss the disease, Professor Franz Conrath, of the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, the German federal research institute for animal health, warned there was a constant threat of an ASF outbreak due to the volume of traffic across the border from infected countries in the Baltic region.
He said some people were "disposing improperly" of infected animals and that "human misbehaviour" was a major factor in the spread of the disease. In the past two years there have been confirmed outbreaks of ASF – which causes spontaneous abortion in pregnant sows, is highly contagious, and kills pigs within days – in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus and Ukraine. It can be spread through direct contact with animals, by equipment being shared between farms, and by ticks.
Speaking to GlobalMeatNews, Conrath said he had been warning for over a year about the need to take the risk seriously. He said any outbreak in Germany would have serious consequences and would be hard to control due to the large wild boar populations.
"If there was an outbreak in the domestic pig population there would be culls and trade restrictions to control it. But I fear an outbreak in Germany may be worse than in the Baltic states because any outbreak in the wild boar population would be extremely difficult to control," Conrath said.
He said efforts to minimise the risk of ASF crossing the border were focused on maintaining disease awareness among the population, and increased surveillance of the wild boar population, to try and limit the potential damage should an outbreak be identified. However, he said, the fact Germany was surrounded by other EU member states and had large borders meant there was a limit to what anyone could do to prevent ASF spreading into the country.
