The first ever international forum on African Swine Fever (ASF) wrapped up in Ottawa on Wednesday, May 1. Over 150 leaders and decision makers from government and industry from 15 countries shared their expertise, engaged in productive discussions, and contributed to developing strategies to address ASF, which is a serious animal disease impacting swine herds in Europe and Asia.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO) for Canada, Dr. Jaspinder Komal, accompanied by Dr. Jack Shere, Chief Veterinary Officer for the United States and Dr. Juan Gay Gutierrez, Chief Veterinary Officer for Mexico offered the following statement.
“Jointly, we have developed a framework that will support ongoing international collaboration and action in the areas of preparedness planning, enhanced biosecurity, business continuity, and coordinated risk communications.”
This framework lays the foundation for:
*A high state of readiness to swiftly control ASF should it enter the Americas region
*Strengthening biosecurity measures to prevent the entry of ASF and mitigate its spread
*Establishing agreements in the swine sector to mitigate the trade impacts of ASF
*Effective communications to best inform Canadians and our neighbouring countries about the risk of ASF
*Through our dialogue over the past two days, we have also identified several key partnerships and governance options to advance the implementation of the jointly developed framework at the regional, or the Americas level, as well as at the sub-regional and national levels.
Here is part of the telephone conference call with the media at the windup of the conference. The Prairie Hog Country asked several questions of the three participants.
Harry Siemens: What kind of input did you have from the countries that have African Swine Fever?
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO) for Canada, Dr. Jaspinder Komal:
“So I said in my previous answer that we had colleagues from FAO who are helping some Asian countries to manage their emergencies. I can summarize in a nutshell; it’s a very complex problem based on where do you find it? You find it in domestic hogs or do you find it in wild pigs? And what is the geographical area in that place? And what type of biosecurity measures do you have? How is your animal movement? How are people moving? How is product moving, not only the meat products but also any other ingredients that are supporting the production of hogs?”
“We knew a lot of stuff, but it was also eye-opener that one strategy does not fit all. We have to develop strategies based on the problem that you have at hand, the density of panic mode of the productions. If you look at our country in Canada here, if you look at Quebec, Ontario or Manitoba, versus the rest of the country, we want to be developing different strategies based on our pig population density.”
Dr. Jack Shere, Chief Veterinary Officer for the United States:
“The only thing I’d add is China was there, and they spoke to the level of infection and the rapid spread, and the fact that they had it not only in their domestic hogs but also in their wild boar. Now wild boar issues became a topic of discussion for the EU, especially the Czech Republic. They eradicated it from their wild boar, but they destroyed a lot of their wild boar doing it. But they had a strategy that they talked about, and that was an interesting strategy when they spoke about passive surveillance and how they went about it.
Dr. Jack Shere:
“The FAO talked to us extensively about plans for the future and how they were going to deal with things. And then the European Union really spoke to us a great deal about their plans for zoning and how they were working on those types of things. So all in all, we had a lot of different discussion about different countries.”
“The China discussion was, to me, the most interesting and what went on there. It’s always a question of, “Where did you get it from?” And it was interesting for them to frame where they thought it came from. They believed that it was passengers bringing contaminated meat to them. So that was their definition of how they became infected.” •
— By Harry Siemens