Spread of swine fever raises alarm in Europe

February 20, 2020 / By mobanmarket

Spread of swine fever raises alarm in Europe

Germany and others are going to extraordinary measures to protect their prized pork.

As African swine fever spreads, European countries — especially Germany — are afraid of the damage that could be caused to their farming sectors.

The deadly disease — which causes internal bleeding and hemorrhages in pigs — is moving quickly through Eastern Europe, typically through wild boar, which travel long distances and can infect domestic pigs being bred on commercial farms.

In response, countries like Germany, the EU’s largest pork producer, are stepping up efforts to protect their pig populations, some going so far as to consider building border walls to keep boars out.

Over the summer, Romania recorded nearly 800 outbreaks of swine fever, including one last week that resulted in the culling of 140,000 animals. The epidemic has rocked the government, with Agriculture Minister Petre Daea holding talks with Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă on Monday about how to contain the escalating situation.

Liviu Dragnea, the leader of Romania’s ruling Social Democratic Party, urged the government over the weekend to step up its efforts to curb the spread of the disease, and the country’s former Prime Minister Dacian Cioloş gave a strongly worded press conference on Sunday where he accused the government of aggravating the spread of the disease through its inaction.

Adding to the sense of urgency on the matter, Bulgaria on Friday announced its first African swine fever outbreak, at a farm located close to the border with Romania.

So far outbreaks of African swine fever have been confirmed in nine EU countries, affecting Estonia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania the worst. Outbreaks have also been confirmed in Russia, Ukraine and Moldova. China, the world’s biggest pig producer, has also recently been hit by the disease.

Germany, which is home to massive pig farms in the east of the country, is becoming increasingly concerned about how countries in the east are dealing with the outbreak. The confirmation of just one case of the disease in Germany could put at risk the roughly 250,000 tons of pork meat that’s exported every year to non-EU countries, according to Verena Schütz, head of the meat livestock sector for the German Raiffeisen Federation, which represents agricultural cooperatives.

The German agriculture ministry has gone to extraordinary measures to keep the disease at bay by collaborating with officials in the Czech Republic, Poland and farther afield. As part of these efforts, Germany has dispatched experts abroad, carried out simulation exercises on containment and given lectures to other governments, advising them on how best to stop the disease from spreading.

At the EU level, Brussels has allocated €1.2 million to member countries to prevent the spread of swine fever. European Health Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis is set to participate in a meeting of European hunters on Wednesday to discuss the disease, and will also travel to Warsaw later this month for a meeting of international animal health experts, where swine fever will be top of the agenda.

“We are afraid in the western part of Europe that it will come,” said Rick Janssen, president of the European Association of Porcine Health Management, a group of veterinarians specializing in swine health. “The risk of getting an outbreak in wild boars is quite high.”

Battling the boar

Janssen said placing controls on wild boars is immensely difficult for governments, who are already advised by the European Commission to carry out hunting programs and implement a long list of biosecurity measures on farms.

In Romania, national efforts to contain the disease have been stymied as it is still not possible to compensate farmers who have had their animals culled unless the disease has been officially confirmed at a laboratory. This has led to farmers feeling reluctant to slaughter their animals. In June, the European Food Safety Authority recommended intensive hunting and not feeding wild boar as ways to reduce the risk of an outbreak.

But in many parts of Eastern Europe where resources are limited and veterinary experts are few, efforts to gas infected segments of the pig population and incinerate them quickly have proven difficult.

“The evolution of African swine fever in Romania is worrying, in particular close to the border with Ukraine and Moldova,” a Commission spokesperson said. “It is of paramount importance for Romania and the whole EU to demonstrate that the Romanian authorities are capable of dealing with emergency situations. Surveillance needs to be reinforced, especially in free areas so to detect the disease as early as possible.”

Janssen, from the European Association of Porcine Health Management, said discussions are underway in Denmark on possibly building a fence along the border with Germany as a preemptive measure against infected wild boars crossing over, if the disease does, in fact, make it into Germany.

Health experts and veterinarians say African swine fever is most easily spread by humans throwing away contaminated food, which can then be eaten and spread by wild boars. But weak enforcement of biosecurity measures in Eastern Europe coupled with a lack of vets means the disease has spiraled out of control in some areas, said Schütz of the German Raiffeisen Federation.

She compared the situation in Romania to the German pork industry in the immediate aftermath of World War II, when farms were generally small in nature and lacking in good hygiene and safety standards.

“Vets don’t earn enough money and they do not have enough people in the veterinary system,” she said.

“There are very few effective measures to eradicate African swine fever from the population and we have one of the highest populations of wild boar in Europe.”

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