Dr. Mark Schipp, the vice president of the World Organization for Animal Health, told reporters in Australia that the spread of the disease in the past year to countries including China, which has half the world’s pig population, has inflamed a worldwide crisis.
African Swine Fever (ASF) is a severe viral disease affecting domestic and wild pigs and can be spread by live or dead pigs, domestic or wild, and even pork products. Transmission can also occur by way of contaminated feed and fomites (non-living objects) such as shoes, clothes, vehicles, knives, equipment, and other items due to the high environmental resistance of the ASF virus.
Schipp says veterinary scientists worldwide are working to find a vaccine for the disease, but that it’s a “complex challenge” because of the nature of the virus. It needs to be noted that African Swine Fever is not the same as classical swine fever (‘Hog Cholera’) which is caused by a different virus. And there is a vaccine for Hog Cholera.
However, Swine fever causes fever, skin lesions, convulsions, and usually (particularly in young animals) death within 15 days, and these symptoms are indistinguishable from African Swine Fever.
Devastating disease to world economy
There have been earlier outbreaks of ASF, but this latest one started in Central and Eastern Europe in January 2014. The first cases were reported Lithuania, swiftly followed by outbreaks in Poland in February, and in Latvia and Estonia in June and September that year.
In September 2018, Dr. Matthew Stone, the deputy director-general of science at the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), talking about the accelerating spread of ASF said, “At the moment because it’s on the move and undergoing a period of pandemic spread it’s very important.
“The key thing that makes us very conscious of the threat that ASF poses is that China represents half the pigs in the world,” says Stone. “It’s extremely important for food security and the economy of China and in the absence of a vaccine, stamping-out policies are crucial.”
In August 2018, ASF showed up in China, killing close to 45 percent of the country’s pig population, and has now become established in other Asian countries such as Vietnam and South Korea. Officials are predicting that China could lose as many as 350 million pigs this year, one-quarter of the world’s pigs.
Today, the virulent virus has been identified in 50 countries around the world. As the disease spreads into Vietnam, Mongolia, Cambodia and beyond, the price of meat is expected to continue rising, driving expansion from big meat exporters such as Brazil, Argentina, and the U.S.
