Measures to curtail the impact of the African swine fever

At the moment, there are some 180 outbreaks of African swine fever in Romania, mostly in the north-west and south-east

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Corina Cristea, 04.09.2018, 13:05

In the last few
weeks, over 140,000 pigs have been killed in Romania, pigs contaminated by the
African swine fever, an illness that is hard to check as there are no cures.
Furthermore, the virus does not develop antibodies and so, no vaccines can be
made.

At the moment,
there are about 4.5 million pigs in Romania, as Minister of Agriculture Petre
Daea said, and one quarter of the country’s counties are affected by the ASF
virus, but not entirely. There are areas where the virus has been identified
only in one household and other areas where it has infected big farms with tens
of thousands of pigs or even one hundred thousand pigs.

The euthanasia
of pigs has been decided in all cases. The most dramatic case has been reported
in Braila County in the south-east, where there is the biggest pig farm in
Romania and the second largest in Europe; 140,000 pigs at the afore-mentioned
farm have been gassed and buried, a process estimated to last about one month.

The population
should know that there is no other way to deal with the African swine fever but
euthanasia, no matter how painful that might be, the Minister made it clear,
adding that measures would further be taken to curb the extension of the virus.
The sale of pork has been banned in markets and road disinfection filters have
been put in place at the entry of counties where outbreaks have been reported.

Minister Daea
went on to say that Romania had asked Brussels for help to fight the African
swine fever and 12 states have offered support to Romania, a country, which according
to Petre Daea, has taken preventive measures against that virus for 5 years
now.

However, the
right wing opposition and President Klaus Iohannis accuse the Social-Democrat-ALDE
government of faulty management of the situation saying that many farmers risk
going bankrupt. Former prime minister Dacian Ciolos points to an extremely serious crisis that
might destroy the entire pig farming sector in Romania and trigger the laying
off of thousands of employees in that sector.

Dacian Ciolos
says that when he was minister of agriculture in Romania or European
Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development he was confronted with such
situations. At that time, it was proved that things could be kept under control
if action was taken in due time. Last but not least, he warned that pork
exports risked being stopped for a while which would have significant
follow-ups, including the growth of the inflation rate.