By Jennifer Dorsett
Field Editor
As African swine fever (ASF) continues to spread across Asia, the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) and the National Pork Board (NPB) are funding research to keep the U.S. free of the deadly disease.
The virus has been present on the African continent for more than 100 years, but the globalization of pork trade has caused the disease to spread far beyond its original geographic confines.
ASF is a highly contagious and deadly viral disease affecting both domestic and wild pigs of all ages. ASF is not a threat to human health and cannot be transmitted from pigs to humans.
“We remain committed to investing pork checkoff funds in strategic ways, such as this collaboration to find new ways to protect our domestic swine herd from foreign animal disease threats,” David Newman, NPB president and an Arkansas hog farmer, said. “Understanding how African swine fever survives can help us create better techniques for controlling the spread of this costly virus and reduce the odds of a domestic outbreak.”
There has never been a case of ASF in the U.S., according to NPG, but the highly contagious virus could devastate the $20 billion U.S. swine industry.
Money for ASF research has been fairly limited in the past, so FFAR and NPG collaborated to offer funding to study how ASF survives, as well as developing methods of testing pigs for the virus. Researchers at Kansas State University and Iowa State University were awarded more than $500,000 for the project.
Both universities will work to identify methods of control and develop fast diagnostic testing for entire herds. An additional research project in Iowa focuses on identifying foreign animal diseases using oral fluid samples.
“There is no time to waste. We must work quickly, and through partnership with the National Pork Board, to drive solutions pork producers can use to detect and manage infected animals if the virus reaches the U.S. This research may be the key to dramatically reducing any potential spread of African swine fever,” FFAR Executive Director Dr. Sally Rockey said. “U.S. pork producers are already coping with uncertainty across the entire sector and an outbreak of African swine fever would devastate American farmers, who are already struggling.”