The Swine Health Information Centre is investigating the potential risk of the transmission of African Swine Fever through feed ingredients and alerting pork producers of that possible risk.

The industry believed that PED came to North America from China in 2013 through imported contaminated feed ingredients but don’t have definite proof.

The Swine Health Information Centre is investigating the potential for the transmission of African Swine Fever through feed and has released a Decision Tree Matrix to help pork producers minimize the viral transmission risk from feed ingredients.

Dr. Paul Sundberg, the executive director of the SHIC, said there’s a lot of interest in the potential risks posed by feed ingredients.

“We don’t have proof positive that PED first came to North America through any feed imported ingredients,” said Dr. Sundberg. “We know with a good amount of certainty that, once it got into the U.S., that both animal and feed ingredients distributed it around the U.S. The real interest here and the real question is about the amount of risk that feeds and feed ingredients may pose for the introduction of ASF. We don’t have hard data that shows that this is a smoking gun and it’s happened before and here’s why and here’s how and here’s what you can do about it. But it’s a potential risk that we want to make sure we close all those windows possible. We’re working with USDA, we’re working with the feed industry itself, and we’re working with researchers on high biosecurity facilities to do some testing and to help us figure out that puzzle, and we’re doing that with a high degree of urgency.”

He said they can’t wait until an infection occurs and then decide what to do, but need to know right now what they can do to help prevent its introduction into the U.S.

With ASF spreading within China, Dr. Sundberg said the concerns and risks for the North American hog industry is indeed the subject of debate.

Dr. Sundberg said the ASF is a very hardy virus and survives a long time in tissues. It has about a 100 per cent mortality rate when it infects a pig and entire herd. There are no vaccines and no treatments.

“The only thing you can do to prevent and to ensure that you don’t get it is bio-security. So we don’t have a lot of tools to be able to fight it should it get here. We’re doing our best to try to keep it out,” he said. “The American Association of Swine Veterinarians, National Pork Producers Council, National Pork Board and Swine Health Information Center, all four industry organizations are talking to USDA regularly about all the things that can be done to help harden our systems. We’re looking at the Customs and Border Protection through the US, and upping the inspections of people that are coming into the country. Not just from the Far East, but also from eastern Europe and other areas, because we know that that virus is not just in China.”

Dr. Sundberg said they’re asking for USDA to help increase the inspections of any swill feeding, any food waste feeding that is going on with pigs around the country, increase those inspections of licensed feeders, and increase the enforcement of the regulations for those that aren’t licensed.

“We’re trying to look at all of the possible inputs and pathways that the virus could gain entry into the country and harden those systems as best as possible,” he said.

Dr. Sundberg defined the potential consequences of African Swine Fever reaching North America.

“Up on the SwineHealth.Org web site is a document that describes a decision tree and provides questions that a producer can use to start that, conversation about feed safety with their feed supplier for any of the foreign animal diseases or any of the animal diseases,” added Sundberg.

“The first thing that will happen is we’ll lose our international trade. So that will take us out of the international trade markets. Of course, that will affect the price of live pigs. The next thing that will happen is that we will have to go through a process of isolation and finally to lead to eradication. So it would be a long, arduous process to go from an infection back to Free State,” he said. “The National Pork Producers Council estimates that in the billions of dollars, not millions, but billions of dollars over a 10-year process to try to get back to free from one of those high consequence, foreign animal diseases. So it would be a huge hurdle to climb over to eradicate that disease.”

The concern in dealing with this particular infection is that PED and ASF are two different viruses, and so they will have two different infective doses, for example, for a pig. They also have some different routes of introduction. PED is high-consequence climax disease that killed a lot of pigs very quickly. ASF can go through a farm more slowly because it takes direct contact or movement of the virus from one place to another, and there’s a longer incubation time. •

— By Harry Siemens