LIMA, Ohio — African Swine Fever has not been detected in the United States, and pork industry leaders want to keep it that way. But as outbreaks continue to spread around the globe, they recognize the need to prepare for problems here.
“Once it happens, it’s going to be too late to plan,” said Mike King, senior director of communications for the Ohio Pork Council, at an educational session during the Ohio Pork Congress, held Feb. 6-7, in Lima.
African Swine Fever has been identified in more than 50 countries and cases surged in China last year. Outbreaks of the highly contagious, deadly viral disease are also spreading in Europe and the Caribbean.
Anna Forseth, director of animal health for the National Pork Producers Council, said planning is necessary to minimize disruption to the nation’s pork industry if an ASF outbreak occurs. She warned that the effects would extend far beyond the farms with diagnosed cases.
Currently, 25% to 30% of U.S. pork production is exported, which contributes about $61 to the price received for each hog, she said. An outbreak in the U.S. would instantly put a stop to those exports.
Making a plan
Harmonizing state and federal ASF response plans as well as giving producers clear directions for on-farm preparations are priorities for the industry, Forseth said.
The pork industry has been able to benefit from the poultry industry’s experiences with highly pathogenic avian influenza to develop ASF plans, she added. For instance, the NPPC and other industry groups have been working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Veterinary Services on the U.S. Swine Health Improvement Plan, patterned after the well-established National Poultry Improvement Plan.
Patrick Webb, assistant chief veterinarian at the National Pork Board, said plans to manage an outbreak of ASF require three supporting efforts, like a three-legged stool. The industry needs a system of tracing animal movements, a way of monitoring animals for disease and a set of biosecurity protocols. All three will be needed to maintain market channels and reestablish exports if an ASF outbreak happens, he said.
Webb has been involved with the development of the AgView platform, www.agview.com, an online disease traceability tool that helps standardize data on animal movement. Producers already have plenty of data on animal movement, but it isn’t necessarily in formats that can easily be combined with data from other producers if there’s a disease outbreak.
“We are data rich, but we are data standardization poor,” he said. Processing data in different formats from different sources is time-consuming and time is critical in the case of a disease outbreak. “The value of AgView is you’re doing that data standardization on the front end.”
Challenges
If an outbreak does happen here, state and federal officials will be stretched thin to monitor the health of hogs in the area of the outbreak. The USDA’s Certified Swine Sample Collector program will help extend their capacity, Webb said. The faster animals can be tested, the quicker an outbreak can be contained and the quicker the industry can get back in business, he said.
“We need more people who are going to be able to take these samples,” he said.
For producers, establishing biosecurity protocols and figuring out disaster preparedness plans can be daunting, but a new online tool assembles resources in one place and guides producers through the process. The site, fadready.org, also offers sections to help veterinarians and government officials coordinate planning and response efforts for foreign animal diseases such as African Swine Fever.
FAD Ready was developed by the Ohio Pork Council and was released last summer. The Ohio Pork Council is collaborating with the National Pork Board and other state organizations to make the tool available nationwide.
Andy Bowman, associate professor with Ohio State’s Department of Veterinary Preventive Medicine, said there are still gaps in planning for foreign animal diseases among Ohio producers.
Ohio State’s College of Veterinary Medicine has been working for the last three years with the Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Ohio Pork Council to help producers complete Secure Pork Supply plans.
The goal of the plans is to make site-specific biosecurity plans and to record premise IDs and site maps. So far, participants have worked on plans for 361 production sites. Of those plans, more than 80% needed to be revised because of discrepancies between the biosecurity maps and the written plans.
Such discrepancies could cause delays in plan implementation, allowing disease to spread, Bowman pointed out. The need for plan revisions shows the value of standardization, training and oversight for biosecurity and foreign animal disease preparedness planning.
Initially, the Secure Pork Supply planning efforts focused on large integrated pork production systems, but plans are important for show pig producers and smaller commercial producers as well, Bowman added. “We think there’s real risk there,” he said.
Planning for the worst
If an outbreak does happen, producers need to be prepared to euthanize infected animals and other hogs within control areas. Many farms currently use captive bolt guns for euthanizing animals, but if entire barns full of hogs must be euthanized to control a disease outbreak, those guns won’t be practical, Bowman said.
Farms don’t have enough captive bolt gun charges or manpower. Moving the animals is also a concern, he added. “We want animals to walk out of the barn on their own power.”
Bowman has been researching options for depopulation of swine herds using inhaled gasses and foams. Animals are first moved out of barns into enclosed trailers, trucks or other vessels, then the gas or foam is pumped into the vessels. Afterward, the dead animals are removed for burial or composting.
Currently, the American Veterinary Medical Association lists only carbon dioxide for inhaled euthanasia. However, Bowman said, water-based foams and nitrogen-based foams can provide faster loss of consciousness.
One foaming agent is stocked in the USDA’s National Veterinary Stockpile, but Bowman has also compiled a list of other agents that perform well, available through firefighting suppliers.
“When the bad day comes, we don’t want to be competing over the same resources,” he said.
Bowman encouraged producers to plan ahead for herd depopulation in case it’s required to contain AFS or another disease.
“If your depopulation plan is ‘The government will come and do it for me,’ that’s a bad plan,” he said.
