ITALIAN AUTHORITIES SLAUGHTER PIGS TO FIGHT SWINE FEVER

Fri 10 June 2022:

After two cases of swine disease were detected on a farm in Rome’s Lazio region, officials declared on Friday (June 10) that a thousand pigs would be slaughtered, prompting fears of a blow to the country’s pork industry.

“We have to slaughter all the pigs in the contaminated area very quickly,” said Angelo Ferrari, the crisis manager, in an interview with AGI news agency. According to the local office’s projections, a thousand pigs will have to be slaughtered to stop the spread.

According to AFP, Ferrari stated, “The sooner we act decisively and incisively, the greater our hope that the commercial damage will be reduced,”

The two cases of African swine fever discovered in Lazio are the country’s first in farmed pigs. Before that, instances were discovered in wild boar in northern Italy in January and then in the Lazio region in February.

Last month, Italy’s largest agricultural organisation, Coldiretti, called on the government to order a “rapid calling” of boards across the country to help stem the spread of the disease.

According to experts, African swine fever (ASF) does not affect humans, but it is contagious and lethal to pigs and their wild relatives, with potentially severe consequences for the pork industry.

A similar outbreak occurred in China in 2018, and the world’s largest pork producer slaughtered millions of pigs to stop the disease from spreading.

For decades, the disease has been present across Europe. According to a report published on December 3, ASF has been found in 32 nations across five geographical regions since January 2020, according to the Geographic Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).

According to the agricultural organization Confagricoltura, Italy is the European Union’s seventh largest pork producer, with almost 8.9 million pigs representing a $ 9.1 billion industry.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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