African swine fever is harmless to humans but is highly contagious and deadly in domestic pigs and wild boars. It has spread from Africa to Europe and Asia and has already killed hundreds of millions of pigs, affecting global meat markets.

Seven dead boars in were found in Fagersta, some 200 km northwest of Stockholm, and more tests are being conducted, the Veterinary Institute said in a statement.

“At present, we do not know how the infection got in, but it is a long jump from the nearest infected area in Europe, and we therefore assume that it has happened through humans and not wild boar,” it said.

While the virus does not affect humans or other animals, it can be spread via pork or by carrying it on shoes, tools or vehicles.

An outbreak of African swine fever has forced pig breeders in Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia to cull thousands of pigs since June and is putting pressure on governments to compensate farmers for their losses.

— Reporting for Reuters by Johan Ahlander.

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On Aug. 3, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada announced $944,340 in funding for Manitoba’s hog farm group. Funds were provided through AAFC’s African Swine Fever Industry Preparedness Program and were slotted for three initiatives: Squeal on Pigs, increased communication with small-scale pork producers and the development of an ASF response plan, should a local case of the virus be found.

The funding “will help protect animal health and ensure the sector remains resilient and competitive internationally,” federal Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Lawrence MacAulay said in a release, noting the economic and psychological toll that a disease like ASF would have on the industry.

“The detection of African swine fever in Canada would be catastrophic for both the Manitoba and Canadian hog sectors and would result in not only a prolonged closure of international borders to pork, but a significant financial impact to our province and country,” the Manitoba Pork Council also said in a release.

Although the disease is not a food safety threat, Canada has watched the devastating impact ASF has had in pork industries in other parts of the world. In particular, outbreaks in China starting in 2018 reportedly wiped out a third of that country’s hog herd. The disease, which has a reputation for its mortality in pigs, was later found in other Asian counties in the region.

Europe has had its own struggles with the disease, while the U.S. and Canada (still ASF-free) were dismayed when it was found in the Dominican Republic last year.

Between 2021 and July 20, 2023, the World Organization for Animal Health reported ASF in 49 countries across five global regions, accounting for 951,000 cases in domestic pigs and 28,000 detected cases in wild swine. That includes nine countries that saw the disease for the first time, and 10 countries where ASF found its way into previously unimpacted regions.

Wild swine have also been a reservoir for ASF in various nations, so there is concern on the Prairies where invasive wild pig populations are a problem.

In Manitoba, the wild swine problem has sparked pilot control programs, as well as the Squeal on Pigs campaign that encourages the public to report wild pig sightings so they can be investigated and addressed.

“African swine fever poses a tremendous risk to our province’s hog sector, and we need to do everything we can to ensure that we are prepared in the event that horrible day comes upon us,” said Manitoba Pork Council chair Rick Préjet.

“We want to commend the federal government for not only stepping up with funding to support producers and our sector, but for their continued engagement on preparatory work with our producers and our staff to ensure that we are best prepared for an outbreak.”

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An isolated outbreak of the deadly hog disease was reported in northwest Italy at the start of the year, and the case found in Rome last week — the first detected in central Italy — has triggered fears of a spreading epidemic.

Andrea Napoletano, a close aide to the president of the Lazio region that surrounds Rome, told state broadcaster Rai the plan is to “selectively” reduce Rome’s wild boar population.

The region has banned picnics and ordered that rubbish bins be fenced off in large swathes of northern Rome, where the disease was found. Lazio’s boar population often enter the city, foraging for food in often-overflowing rubbish bins.

In a statement on Monday, the Lazio region said that out of 16 tests carried out on boars after the first case was detected last week, two were “very probably” positive to swine fever. Definitive results were not yet available.

Junior health minister Andrea Costa said the spread of wild boars was a problem all over Italy and a “large-scale cull” was required nationally, despite the concerns of animal rights groups and environmentalists.

African swine fever is harmless to humans but often fatal to pigs, leading to financial losses for farmers. It originated in Africa before spreading to Europe and Asia and has killed hundreds of millions of pigs worldwide.

China suspended pork imports from Italy in January after the illness was detected in a wild boar in the north-western Piedmont region.

The Italian government subsequently appointed a special commissioner to co-ordinate measures aimed at eliminating the disease.

— Reporting for Reuters by Angelo Amante.

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The provincial ag ministry announced the moratorium Wednesday and said it’s “developing regulations for licensing existing commercial wild boar farms.”

Regulations for wild boar and feral pigs are also to be developed under the province’s Pest Control Act, the ministry said. Those rules would declare feral pigs to be a regulated pest in the province, and would “specify the various monitoring and control efforts as well as public obligations to report.”

Provincial funding for Saskatchewan Crop Insurance’s feral wild boar control program, which includes surveillance and eradication work, will also be doubled to $200,000, the ministry said.

Agriculture Minister David Marit, in a release Wednesday, described the moves as “substantial steps that improve risk management and protect the resilience and security of our agriculture industry, which is a critical component of our provincial economy.”

The move also follows Ontario’s decisions last fall not only to regulate wild boar as an invasive species, but to phase out the production of farmed wild boar in that province entirely.

Wild boar were introduced in Saskatchewan in the late 1970s as domestic livestock, and over time many of those animals have “escaped and reproduced at a rapid pace,” the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) said in a separate release last month.

SARM — which in its release called for the province to impose a moratorium on new farms — said it now knows of “over 60” southern Saskatchewan RMs “suffering from overpopulated boars.”

Feral pigs now are thus “established within localized regions of the province, including agricultural production areas, and represent a significant problem due to damage caused to hay and crop land and to natural areas, as well as their potential to spread invasive plant species,” the province said Wednesday.

The invasive hogs also “harass” livestock and wildlife, and are considered potential reservoirs for livestock diseases such as African swine fever (ASF), the province said..

A federally reportable disease that hasn’t yet made it to North America, ASF cut into China’s hog herd by as much as half after its arrival there in 2018.

More recently, the disease is believed to have spread to domestic hog herds in several European countries through that continent’s wild boar populations and has turned up in hogs in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

“To this day, wild boar have free rein of rural Saskatchewan land with no predators keeping the population in check,” SARM president Ray Orb said in that group’s release Feb. 17.

“Each year, the risk of transferable disease grows between domestic hogs. We can’t ignore the damaging financial and environmental impact wild boars leave in their wake any longer.”

Sask Pork board chair Toby Tschetter, in a separate release Wednesday, said the province’s planned new regulations “will help protect the provincial hog industry and help us to keep our food supply secure. We encourage farmers, ranchers and the public to use the wild boar reporting services as much as possible.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Tests confirmed the disease in a dead boar in Ovada, located about 120 km southwest of Milan in northern Italy, the statement said.

African swine fever is harmless to humans but often fatal to pigs, leading to financial losses for farmers. It originated in Africa before spreading to Europe and Asia and has killed hundreds of millions of pigs worldwide.

The discovery in Italy could be a blow to the country’s meat producers as governments often block imports of pork products from countries where the disease has been found as a way to prevent transmission.

China and other pork buyers banned imports of German pork in September 2020 after the first case was confirmed in wild animals in Germany.

The Piedmont regional government asked city mayors to stop hunting following the discovery. Wild boar can transmit the virus to other pigs.

The government also said it is raising its surveillance of wild boars and hog farms and increasing cleaning measures on farms as much as possible.

“As in the case of the (COVID-19) pandemic, the African swine fever emergency must also be addressed by appealing to everyone’s collaboration,” said Piedmont’s health deputy, Luigi Icardi, in the statement. “Piedmont health system is working alongside operators in the sector to prevent the circulation of the virus and protect swine farms.”

In China, the world’s biggest pork producer, African swine fever destroyed half the hog herd within a year of being detected there in 2018. Last year, Haiti and the Dominican Republic confirmed the first outbreaks in the Americas in nearly 40 years.

— Reporting for Reuters by Caroline Stauffer and Tom Polansek in Chicago and Joice Alves in London.

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To that end, the province is making funding available to farmers who actively breed and raise wild boar to “shift to other forms of production such as heritage breeds of swine, other livestock or crop production.”

“Our government is taking action to phase out the production of Eurasian wild boar,” provincial Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford said in a release Oct. 19.

“Preventing the spread of new invasive species such as wild pigs is another critical step to safeguard the swine industry from the ASF, and protect the broader health of our communities, economy and natural environment.”

“Farm escapes of Eurasian wild boar amplify the population of wild pigs, which have already caused widespread problems in Canada’s Prairie provinces and many American states,” the province said.

Apart from damage wild pigs are known to cause in crops and other settings, other countries’ experience has also shown wild pigs on the move pose a significant risk for potentially transmitting swine fever to commercial pork operations, the province added.

The province will now fund “detection and removal efforts” and also regulate wild pigs under the provincial Invasive Species Act.

Specifically, the province will ban the “import, possession, transport, propagation, lease, trade, buying and sale of Eurasian wild boar and their hybrids” effective Jan. 1, 2022.

To help the province’s wild boar farmers toward a “faster transition,” those who own wild boar as of Oct. 19 — and who agree to stop raising wild boar within six months — will be eligible for support.

Information on a transition program intake for wild boar producers is to be made available on the Agricorp website “in the coming weeks,” the province said.

Eligible farmers will get $200 per animal to “eliminate their herd while also transitioning to other forms of production.”

The province’s announcement also included plans for a new targeted funding intake starting Nov. 5 under the federal/provincial Canadian Agricultural Partnership for Ontario pork producers, processors and other agribusinesses.

That funding will go to support “training, education and planning” along with “supply and infrastructure investments and modifications needed to strengthen swine-related operations, support industry businesses, and protect the herds and livelihoods of Ontario pork producers.”

CAP funding will also be allocated under the Partnership for an education outreach and awareness campaign for “smallholder” farms — those that market fewer than 1,000 hogs or 50 sows per year.

That campaign will focus on “increasing small hog producers’ awareness of the risks of (swine fever) and the need for strong biosecurity and emergency preparedness measures.”

Once the CAP intake information is posted, applicants will be able to submit forms on a first-come, first-served basis until Dec. 3, and can apply for reimbursement of 50 per cent of costs, up to $40,000 per applicant.

“In the wake of growing concerns since African swine fever has been detected in the Caribbean, this funding will support new measures that protect the prosperity and resiliency of the entire sector,” federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said in the province’s release. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The suspected case concerned a wild boar carcass found near the German-Polish border. A sample of the carcass was being taken for tests at the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut laboratory, the ministry said in a statement.

“As soon as the analysis is completed, Federal (Agriculture) Minister Julia Kloeckner will provide information about the results tomorrow,” the ministry added.

Germany had feared a spread of the disease after cases were confirmed in wild boars in west Poland in past months with one Polish case found only about 10 km from the German border.

Cases have also been recently confirmed in about 10 other European countries in wild boars which are suspected to be spreading the disease.

ASF is not dangerous to humans but fatal to pigs. Some countries impose import bans from regions where it has been discovered, in non-farm wild boars.

Millions of pigs have died or been culled due to the outbreak in China and other Asian countries. The disease has slashed China’s pig herd by half since 2018.

There have been fears in Germany that its major exports of pork to China and other Asian regions could be threatened if the disease arrives in the country.

Asian countries including China regularly impose import bans on pork from regions where ASF has been discovered, causing painful loss of business for meat exporters.

Germany exported some 158,000 tonnes of pork worth 424 million euros (C$658 million) to China between January and April 2020, double the tonnage in the same time in 2019, Germany’s national statistics office said.

Sales were ironically fuelled by China’s increased import demand because the disease has devastated pig herds.

— Writing for Reuters by Paul Carrel; additional reporting by Michael Hogan.

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Ryan Brook, associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan’s Indigenous Land Management Institute and Department of Animal and Poultry Science, warns that the expansion of this invasive species can lead to destructive consequences for livestock and crop production, as well as negative environmental impacts.

Brook, who runs the Canadian Wild Pig Research Project, has been working with his team for eight years, building from the ground up on a species of which little was known. Their latest research development, he reported, is likely their most important to date.

“We’ve developed a set of maps over the last three major periods from 1990 to present showing the spatial expansion of pigs across Canada,” said Brook. These maps are the first of their kind in Canada, with the strongest information yet. “Most alarming is how rapidly they’re spreading. In the last 10 years, on average they spread about 80,000 kilometres per year across all of Canada.”

Their early research explored the origin of wild pigs in Canada, which came from domestic herds. Domestic wild boars from Europe and Asia were imported to Canada in the late 1980s and early 1990s, primarily for meat production. Operations were set up in each province, with the largest number in Saskatchewan, but the market for wild boar meat didn’t grow as hoped. The animals also proved difficult to raise, with many instances of wild boars escaping from farms. More worrisome is the fact that some producers essentially gave up and cut their fences, letting hundreds of animals go.

Once these animals were loose in the wild, they began to thrive. “These animals are highly adapted to the cold,” said Brook. During this winter’s deep freeze, they just buried themselves under the snow, he added.

Wild pigs are now found across Canada, with the majority of sightings in the Prairie provinces. This is because many wild boar operations were established in the Prairies, and the habitat supports them well.

Populations have expanded rapidly due to their very high reproductive rate. “Wild pigs are having multiple litters per year, and the litter size on average in the Canadian Prairies is six,” said Brook.

Wild pigs also reach sexual maturity at a relatively young age, around four to six months. “Those numbers are just incredible in terms of how fast you take… one bred female and have more than 100 animals.”

The spread of wild pigs can be a major problem for livestock production and the environment due to their destructive nature, Brook said. Their large size and razor-sharp tusks make them dangerous to encounter; the largest wild pig that Brook and his team have handled to date was 638 pounds. As well, wild pigs will eat about anything, from canola to white tail deer, which they hunt. They’re also known to have an impact on wetlands by destroying waterfowl nests, tearing up plants and negatively affecting water quality.

Another issue is reports of wild pigs harassing livestock. “They’ll come in and scare animals off feed and off of water to the point that some producers here in Saskatchewan have told me they’ve had to move their feeding areas and watering areas because their cattle won’t go back to those areas due to harassment. The pigs are extremely aggressive,” he said.

While there are no known reports in Saskatchewan of wild pigs killing livestock, in the U.S. they are known to kill lambs and calves.

They also pose threats to crop production and pasture health, significantly damaging both. “Not only do they eat the crop, of course, but they lay in it and flatten it, and they rip up the ground to get at roots of different plants, so they’ll tear up pastures,” said Brook. “One night visit from 14 pigs and we’ll see large areas that just look like a rototiller went through.”

Aggressive action needed to decrease numbers

Brook has stated that Canada needs to address this issue, as populations will soon become “practically impossible to control.” While eradicating any invasive species is challenging, Brook explained that wild pigs are especially difficult to deal with because of how intelligent and mobile they are.

“It’s the most prolific invasive large mammal on earth,” he said. “Every year that the population increases in number and expands into new areas, it becomes that much more difficult. So I don’t think I will ever say that eradication is impossible for wild pigs. It really becomes how expensive it is.”

He referenced Texas, with its estimated population of three to four million wild pigs, as an example of how difficult eradication is in practice. “They kill hundreds of thousands of animals in a year, and that does not reduce the population.”

While his team is currently working to determine the total population of wild pigs in Canada, the species’ exponential growth paired with the difficulty in eradication creates the possibility for further challenges. “This idea of having more wild pigs than people in Saskatchewan is not an unreasonable thing to say.”

Eradicating wild pigs requires several aggressive methods working in conjunction. “There’s no silver bullet,” he said. “We have to have a whole bunch of tools in the toolbox, and all those tools have to be working together as part of a real science-based strategy.”

While strategies such as sport hunting only manage the populations, there has been success in putting GPS collars on one pig and follow it to a larger group, allowing hunters to remove all the pigs in the group.

Removing an entire group is the best way to reduce numbers, Brook said. Their experience, along with U.S. findings, show that only killing some of a group is ineffective, as the remaining animals will quickly reproduce and build their numbers back up.

“You go out and find a group of 10 and you kill six, it has no impact on the population,” he said. “You can continue to do that in Saskatchewan for the next 100 years and the population, I’m sure, will just keep growing.”

There are dedicated groups of hunters working to reduce wild pig numbers. One such group is located around Saskatchewan’s Moose Mountain Provincial Park.

“The local group are primarily cattle producers at Moose Mountain, who have worked with us for years and have been a huge supporter in getting our program going,” said Brook.

While this group has been highly successful in hunting wild pigs in the area, he is concerned that the spread of the animals will make their efforts all for naught. “They’ve done a great job in removing pigs in and around that park, but there’s enough pigs on the broader landscape that just keep coming in.”

Provincial and federal strategies are needed to deal with this invasive species, Brook stated. “We have no plan in Saskatchewan right now, and I think that’s to my mind the biggest gap.”

He would like to see partners such as related provincial departments and agriculture organizations collaborate to create a plan.

In the next stages of their research, Brook and his team plan to focus on genetics in order to better understand the source and movement of wild pigs, as well as the level of hybridization.

“Most of the pigs that you would see out in the wild in Saskatchewan today are some type of hybrid with domestic pigs, we think,” he said. He added they need to finish their genetic studies to confirm this hunch. They have genotyped numerous samples and are looking for funding to complete this work.

In addition to continuing their monitoring efforts through trail camera networks, they’re also working on the next layer on their map and tracking the movement of wild pigs. By using trail cameras to help estimate population density, they should soon be able to estimate the total number of wild pigs in Canada.

Brook is especially concerned about the lack of information available on diseases wild pigs may carry, citing current global disease concerns such as porcine epidemic diarrhea and African swine fever.

“There is no disease testing program in Canada for wild pigs, and to my knowledge there has been only a handful of animals that have been tested in Saskatchewan from a few spots,” he said. “We have no real idea of what the disease status is of wild pigs, so not only is it a potential serious impact on livestock producers but a real concern for spreading disease to wildlife, potentially to pets and humans as well.”

Brook would like to see disease testing move forward in the next few years. “We can collect samples, but it’s the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that needs to agree to do any testing.”

Other areas to explore include how livestock fit in to this issue. “There’s a massive need also to look at interactions between wild pigs and livestock,” he said, noting that due to the nature of domestic hog production, cattle are more likely to encounter wild pigs than their domestic counterparts. “So what does that mean for cattle in terms of everything from pasture to disease transmission to being pushed off feed in winter and pushed off those water sources in summer in other places?”

Obtaining funding for this research has been a challenge at times. They’ve received support from the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan Pork and the Saskatchewan Wildlife Development Fund over the years. Funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture has helped them to increase the size of their program.

Brook encourages producers to report wild pig sightings to the Canadian Wild Pig Research Project’s Facebook page. All information is confidential, and any sightings or photos go into their national database. They also ask hunters to submit ears from hunted pigs for their genetic database.

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Actually, it’s not the boars themselves, but what they’re eating. A cold and snowy winter is forcing them to feed on false truffles, an underground mushroom common in the Sumava mountain region shared by Czechs, Austrians, Germans — and wild boars.

The mushrooms can absorb high levels of the radioactive isotope Caesium 137. And three decades ago the nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl released a fair amount of Caesium 137 that eventually drifted down on the Sumava mountains.

Now the boars are eating the mushrooms, and ingesting the Caesium 137 along with them. That’s making their meat radioactive, Jiri Drapal at the State Veterinary Administration told Reuters.

“It is more or less a seasonal issue,” Drapal said.

But it’s a long season. The half life of Caesium 137 is 30 years — that is, it takes 30 years for the radioactivity of the isotope to fall to half its original value, then another 30 to fall to half again, and so on.

“We can expect to find (affected) food for a number of years from now,” Drapal said.

And that could cause some problems with the supply of boar meat, which is popular in the Czech Republic. It often shows up on restaurant menus in goulash, a thick stew of meat, sauce and dumplings.

Any boar that ends up as goulash ought to be safe. Every wild animal hunted, not only boars, must be inspected before its meat can get to customers. Radioactive meat is banned from circulation, Drapal said.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that 614 animals were inspected from 2014 to 2016, and 47 per cent were above the limit — almost half.

The semi-good news is that even meat from radioactive animals would be a health hazard only in large doses, Drapal said. You would have to eat it several times a week for a couple of months, to get sick, he said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Robert Muller and Jiri Skacel.

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The Canadian Food Inspection Agency on Monday put out a reminder to all pork producers that they and other “pig custodians,” such as breeders, auction markets and livestock truckers, must “properly identify, record and report movement of pigs under their care or control, from the animals’ birth or import to slaughter or export.”

Changes to the federal Health of Animals Regulations requiring traceability for the mainline hog industry took effect on July 1 last year.

The regulations, when amended early last year, also set the effective date for the wild boar sector to follow the same traceability requirements, starting July 1, 2015.

Any hog or wild boar producer or “custodian” who fails to meet the new requirements could be subject to “enforcement action such as warnings, fines or prosecution,” CFIA stressed Monday.

The traceability system, run by the Canadian Pork Council through its PigTrace Canada arm, is meant to help “limit the economic impacts of animal health emergencies such as animal disease outbreaks,” CFIA said.

All custodians of swine and/or carcasses are responsible to report the necessary information to PigTrace Canada. The job can be delegated to a third party, such as a head office, marketer or trucker, but “the responsibility remains with the custodian,” according to PigTrace.

When live pigs, deadstock or parts of deadstock are being moved, movement information must be reported within seven days of departure and arrival by both the sender and the receiver.

Movement information can be reported directly to the PigTrace database or by toll-free phone at 1-866-300-1825. Everyone required to report swine movement information must also maintain records of his or her shipments for five years afterward.

Except for sows and boars, pigs moved farm-to-farm within Canada don’t need to be individually identified, but “documented movement information” such as a manifest must accompany a shipment. Exported and imported pigs, however, must have “approved identifiers.”

Herd mark shoulder slap tattoos or approved ear tags must be applied to pigs going to any Canadian slaughter facility, be it directly or by way of an assembly yard.

Individual ear tag ID must also be applied to pigs used for breeding when leaving the site where the animals were bred.

More details on traceability for hogs and farmed wild boars are available on the PigTrace website. (Click on “Requirements.”) — AGCanada.com Network

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