The continued spread of African Swine Fever, a lethal and infectious disease which affects wild and domestic pigs, in the Caucasus has led to calls for greater control measures.

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The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation announced on Tuesday (21st August) that, following the disease’s spread to Ukraine, ASF poses an “ongoing risk to neighbouring areas” including Moldova, Kazakhstan and Latvia, which all have large pig populations, where many of the animals are raised on household or family farms.

African swine fever was confined to Africa until 1957, when the disease was reported in Lisbon, Portugal. Over the following years outbreaks were reported in Spain, Portugal, France and Belgium, though disease control measures finally led to the disease’s eradication in Europe in the 1990s, though it continues to affect the Italian Island of Sardinia.

From then until 2007, the virus was effectively controlled outside Africa and Sardinia. However, since 2007 ASF has severely affected parts of Russia, Georgia and Armenia. 

Although the disease does not affect humans, mortalities among pigs can be extremely high. Last year, up to 300,000 pigs were killed or died as a result of ASF in Russia, incurring an estimated $240 million in economic losses.

FAO Chief Veterinary Officer Juan Lubroth commented following the outbreak in Ukraine, "National and local authorities in the entire region should scale up their prevention measures and be ready to respond in case of further outbreaks. This could be the first of more outbreaks to come, according to our disease analyses."

He said Ukraine had responded quickly to the outbreak, implementing sanitary measures, destroying affected pigs and imposing a quarantine zone around the village where the outbreaks occurred. Farmers have been paid compensation for lost pigs to prevent the loss affecting poor families dependent on pig farming.

According to the FAO veterinary officer, humans can contribute to the spread of ASF. He advised a strict ban on ‘swill feeding’ as contaminated food scraps can cause infection among domestic pigs. Lubroth said studies on ASF in the Russian Federation indicate that swill feeding is responsible for 97 percent of all new infections in domestic pigs. The backyard sector, which accounts for 34 percent of the entire domestic pig population, is typically infected first before subsequently passing the virus on to commercial farms.

However, bans on swill feeding can be challenging to enforce in resource-poor regions, where swill feeding is a low-cost option for feeding pigs.

FAO veterinary advisers have warned that, should the virus spread, which can occur through a range of vectors from parasites, to feed and migration of diseased wild boar populations, it will be more difficult to combat in the denser and larger pig populations of countries such a Hungary, Poland, Germany and France.  

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