African Swine Fever, Classical Swine Fever, Pseudorabies Remain Top International Concern

Farmscape for September 14, 2020

The Swine Health Information Center reports the circulation of African Swine Fever, Classical Swine Fever and Pseudorabies in other regions remains a top concern for the North American swine sector.
As part of its September newsletter, the Swine Health Information Center has released its monthly global and domestic swine disease monitoring reports.
SHIC Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg says trends are being tracked internationally to predict where our biggest risk will happen so we can perhaps prevent infections from getting to North America.

Clip-Dr. Paul Sundberg-Swine Health Information Center:
Certainly we look at Asia.
Every month we're monitoring and looking at China and southeast Asia for circulation of pathogens.
African Swine Fever continues.
Pseudorabies virus is one that is very important and it is at a high spot right now, especially in China.
Classical Swine Fever continues to move in Asia as well.
We're seeing African Swine Fever being reported at the highest level of 2020 so far in the Ukraine in eastern Europe.
Certainly everybody is looking at the COVID experience and the international travel experience and saying we must be at lower risk because there's much less international travel.
While that is true, that there's much less international travel and that might translate into a decreased risk for introduction of pathogens, we know there are other pathways to get these things into the country.
Our customs and border protection recently interdicted on about 20 tons of meat products that were illegally smuggled into California so there's a lot of activity other than just international travel that can include our processes for risk and we're making sure that we're looking at all of those to try to help us understand better and be better prepared to prevent introduction of these diseases.

The domestic and global swine disease monitoring reports can be accessed at swinehealth.org.
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Bruce Cochrane.

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