African swine fever continues to cause huge disrutpion across Europe, with significant outbreaks recorded in Hungary, Finland and Serbia in recent weeks.
Hungary’s National Food Chain Safety Office (Nébih) has confirmed its second outbreak in domestic pigs at a pig farm with approximately 1,850 pigs in Somogy County, in the west of the country, Reuters reports. The entire herd was due to be culled, as the authorities put disease-control measures in place.
Hungary confirmed its first case in domestic pigs in early June on a farm in the eastern county of Szabolcs-Szatmar-Bere with 3,000 pigs, meaning its two commercial outbreaks are not georgraphically close.
Hungary has reported ASF in wild boar since April 2018, but, until June, had never recorded a case in domestic pigs.
Finland’s problem grows
Finland’s food authority has announced it is enlarging its ASF control zone, as more cases emerge in wild boar in Virolahti in the south-east of the country, near the border with Russia.. The virus was detected for the first time in wild boar in the northern European country in late July, with 14 cases confirmed since then, according to the Finnish Food Authority.
The agency noted that some of the new cases had been discovered outside the original core area, and asked ‘berry pickers, mushroom pickers, and other people… to avoid the area even before its exact boundaries have been defined and a map has been published’, Euractiv reports.
Sirpa Kiviruusu, head of the food authority’s animal health and medication unit, it was ‘very likely’ that the boar had come from Russia, although this was not confirmed. “The strain is the same as the one that has been found in the Baltic countries and, for example, in Central Europe,” she told AFP.
Serbia ASF toll grows
Nearly 3,000 pigs have been slaughtered in just over two weeks in Serbia, as the total number of domestic pigs that died or were culled because of ASF has reached 36,632 in total, Dragan Glamocic, minister of agriculture, forestry and water management, told Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) recently.
The affected pigs come from 930 infected farms across seven districts, 13 municipalities and 62 towns and villages, Srpske Novine reports.
In early July 9, more than 11,000 pigs were culled on a single farm in Hrtkovci, in Serbia’s biggest single outbreak.