Eastern Europe sees sharp rise in swine fever outbreaks

Growing signs that devastating virus that has gripped Asia could hit Europe

African swine fever is threatening to take hold in Europe as a sharp increase in cases of the virus raises concerns among farmers and animal health experts about its potential to devastate the continent’s pork industry.

In the past month Romania has seen a jump in reported swine fever cases among domestic pig herds with about 300 new outbreaks reported in July, up from nearly 80 in June and 30 in January.

The European Commission said the fight against swine fever, which is fatal for pigs but poses no threat to human health, was an “extreme and urgent challenge” because of the threat it posed to the continent’s pig herds.

African swine fever — which was identified in Kenya in the early 1900s — has spread rapidly in China and other parts of Asia over the past year, pushing up pork prices.

More than 4m pigs have been culled in Asia and according to

some estimates China’s pig herd could halve in size from last year as a result.

In the EU, Bulgaria has also stepped up pig culls after 18 cases were diagnosed in July while Slovakia reported its first case of the disease last month.

The virus has not yet spread to Europe’s leading pork-producing nations, including Germany, France and the Netherlands. But Justin Sherrard, an analyst at Rabobank, said that “as seen in China and Vietnam, if the disease were to spread, it will have devastating consequences [in Europe]”.

All 28 EU member states are obliged to apply prevention and control measures where the disease is suspected or confirmed.

Romania’s outbreak of the highly contagious disease is “an unfortunate mixture of politics, disorganisation and inefficiency,” said Ioan Ladosi, president of the Romanian Association of Pork Producers, which represents producers of more than 80 per cent of the country’s pigs.

Romania culled more than 200,000 pigs last year when the country’s largest pig breeder was infected. Mr Ladosi blamed the government for the latest outbreak, saying it had “failed to implement in full” the recommendations made in EU audits over the past 12 months “for a simple reason: politics and votes” as politicians feared angering small farmers.

Romania’s pig industry includes about 250 commercial pig producers, but more than 50 per cent of animals are raised by backyard farmers. Mr Ladosi accused politicians of favouring the small-scale businesses in an attempt to boost their votes, making the swine fever outbreak a “political disease”.

The virus is mainly carried by wild boar which mingle with roaming domestic pigs. It was first detected in Georgia in 2007, from where it spread to Russia. By 2014 cases had been seen in Ukraine and Belarus and then Lithuania, but incidence had until recently been largely confined to wild boar.

Vytenis Andriukaitis, EU health and food safety commissioner, last month urged member states to be extremely vigilant during the summer months, when incidents of the disease tend to peak.