African Swine Fever has never been found in North America, but the disease poses a constant threat to the U.S. pork industry which U.S. officials and industry experts are well aware of.
ASF has been in Europe since 2014 and it devastated the Chinese pork industry as well in 2018, leading to the loss of nearly $100 billion in revenue because of nearly 225 million pigs lost to the disease.
Dusty Oedekoven is the chief veterinarian with the National Pork Board. Dusty has been to Europe to study the disease mitigation strategies currently employed to slow and stop the spread of the disease.
Oedekoven says that Denmark also has strict biosecurity measures at the border for trucks who want to cross.
Oedekoven says that the trip to Europe helped him to understand the importance of the risk of people transporting contaminated or infected products, the risks of wild boar, the importance of fencing, and the importance of regionalization when battling ASF in Europe.
While wild boar create many headaches and issues for dealing with the spread of ASF in Europe, the feral swine population in the United States is much more regionalized.
ASF is now located much closer to home with the disease being found in the island countries of the Dominican Republic and Haiti in 2021. As the disease continues to spread across the globe, industry members continue to take the necessary steps to protect the United States from a potential outbreak.
