With collaborative efforts under way across the UK pig supply chain to prevent and prepare for an African swine fever (ASF) outbreak, there is no better place to look for lessons than Spain.
The impact of the shock outbreak in wild boar in Catalonia, confirmed in late November, has been huge. However, it is widely acknowledged that actions taken by government and industry before and since the outbreak have gone a long way to limiting the damage.
Spain is the EU’s biggest pork industry, producing 50 million pigs a year and running at 150% self-sufficiency. It was exporting 25,000t of pigmeat exported outside the EU every week, with long-term agreements in with trading partners, including exports of more 500,000t/year to China.
The outbreak caused pig prices, which had already plummeted since the summer, to collapse by a further 30%, as Spain’s ability to export was severely hampered.
Regionalisation agreements
Regionalisation within the EU, allowing exports to continue from outside the infected areas, was rapidly established.
But Spain and the wider EU pork sector faced the prospect of 25,000t of non-EU export needing to find a new home within Europe, Jordi Mora, global director for Eco Animal Health in Spain, told the forum, which was chaired by AHDB pork sector director Mark Haighton.
Positively, however, 80% of importing countries outside the EU quickly also agreed to accept Spanish pork produced outside the ASF-affected region
Most crucially, within days of the outbreak being confirmed, Spain signed a regionalisation agreement with China that saw its biggest pork importer agree to only suspend imports from affected ‘zones’ rather than the whole country – a huge achievement. “Work started on the agreement four years ago and the integrators in Spain were fundamental to the discussions and assurances that were needed for China to sign it,” Jordi explained.
In late May, the Philippines, which a few weeks earlier reached a similar agreement with Germany, became the latest country to accept regionalised pork exports from Spain.
“If regionalisation agreements were not in place, it would have been a complete disaster for both Spain and the EU. For Spain, ASF is a ‘trade disease’, rather than a production disease,” Jordi said.
Biosecurity and surveillance
The authorities quickly introduced a special wild boar surveillance and culling programme, with a legal obligation to report dead boars, alongside surveillance of pig farms within the affected zones.
Nearly six months after the first disease outbreak, a total of 52 outbreaks had been notified, amounting to 322 cases of positive wild boar – but no domestic pigs had been affected.
Jordi noted that improvements can still be made to prevent wild boar feeding in bins – for example, in public picnic areas – and, in retrospect, wild boar culling should have started earlier, he said. Further collaboration between government officials and industry will also be key.
The Spanish pig industry’s biosecurity standards are some of the best in Europe, having suffered a number of swine fever outbreaks over the decades. Standards are reinforced by law and annual farm audits.
This is aided by the fact that almost the entire Spanish pig herd is farmed indoors, with specialised farms for breeding, nursery and finisher pigs, rather than farrow-to-finish herds. Extensive vertical integration means the top eight pig production businesses account for 40% of the country’s total sow herd, with strong links into processors.
Comprehensive industry disease surveillance is a strength, with a national strategy introduced in 2023 in response to increased ASF risk. “Annually, 1,200 farms are tested for ASF. These are randomly selected and all must comply,” said Jordi.
UK differences
Mandy Nevel, AHDB’s head of animal health and welfare, emphasised that not all of the processes and measures that were effective for Spain will necessarily work for the UK.
In Spain, the feral pig population was the key issue, while in the UK, commercial herds present a much higher risk, due to factors such as a lack of perimeter fencing on pig units – an important area for improvement – and the complexities of biosecurity for our outdoor pig production systems.
Feral pigs still form part of the UK’s ASF risk – while populations are quite small and discrete, they are more dense than the population where Spain’s outbreak began. ASF surveillance is ongoing, but not to the same extent as in Spain.
On trade agreement negotiations, the UK needs to consider whether regionalisation or compartmentalisation is the most suitable route, she added. Regionalisation worked well in Spain, where the outbreak was in feral pigs, but if a UK outbreak were to happen predominantly in commercial pigs, compartmentalisation might suit better.
“For a compartmentalisation agreement, the industry would need to achieve auditable separation of the supply chain from infected premises and product from that region,” Mandy explained.
Everyone needs to act
She stressed that, while a lot of progress has been made, ‘there is always more we can do’. “We have got abattoir pre-designation agreements in place, but we need to negotiate regionalisation and compartmentalisation agreements with trading partners, too,” Mandy said.
Spain had been proactive and pre-agreed regionalisation with China, which was crucial.
“There should be shared responsibility across the supply chain for actions – everyone needs to play a role,” she emphasised. “We must remember that we can still keep ASF out of our industry, as it is not an airborne disease. We have to see the farm gate as our last line of defence.”
ASF cases surge in domestic pigs and wild boar in the EU
A total of 19 European countries reported African swine fever (ASF) in 2025, as cases soared in domestic pigs and wild boar in the EU.
The number of outbreaks recorded in domestic pigs across the EU increased by 76% to 585, according to the European Food Safety Authority’s latest annual epidemiological report.
However, following a fall in 2024, the figure is still lower than every year between 2018 and 2023, with the exception of 2022.
The increase was largely driven by Romania, which accounted for 81% (476) of all domestic EU outbreaks last year. The next highest was Croatia with 53 outbreaks.
Most outbreaks, 91%, occurred in establishments with fewer than 100 pigs, and a clear summer peak was observed.
Wild boar
This was accompanied by a 44% rise in cases in wild boar across the EU to 11,036, up from 7,677 in 2024 and the highest figure since 2021.
Poland accounted for nearly one in three outbreaks (31%), with 3,429 cases, followed by Germany (18%, 2001 cases) and Latvia (11%, 1,266 cases).
In several countries, including Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, a clear winter peak in wild boar outbreaks was observed, while no consistent seasonal pattern was evident in other member states.
More positively, successful regional campaigns to control the disease in wild boar populations took place in Czechia and southern Italy.
There were two ‘long-distance translocation events’ in 2025, in Germany and Spain, both involving wild boar.
In Spain, genetic analyses did not identify the origin of the isolate involved, but suggested the event was compatible with human-mediated translocation. In Germany, genetic analyses revealed that the newly introduced isolate was distinct from those previously circulating in the country.
The shock emergence of the virus in Spain in November, after 31 years without detection, raised the number of affected member states to 14 in 2025.
Surveillance
The EU carried out record levels of ASF surveillance in 2025, analysing more than 518,000 samples from domestic pigs and 618,000 samples from wild boar. Passive surveillance detected 84% of ASF outbreaks in domestic pigs and 73% in wild boar.
In summary
- In the EU, Croatia, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia notified ASF outbreaks in wild boar and domestic pigs, while Bulgaria, Czechia, Germany, Hungary and Spain notified outbreaks in wild boar only.
- ASF was notified in a further five non-EU countries – in domestic pigs and wild boar in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine and in wild boar in North Macedonia.