Another case of African swine fever (ASF) has been confirmed on a farm in east Germany, the authorities said on Thursday.
The virus was confirmed on a pig breeding farm in Greifswald in the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the state’s agriculture ministry said, according to Reuters.
There have been isolated cases on farms since the virus was discovered in wild boar in the east of the country, near the Polish border, in September 2020, but most of the subsequent spread has been in wild boar. In 2023, Germany recorded one case in domestic pigs and 888 outbreaks in wild boar, an improvement on 2022, recently-published European Food Safety Authority figures show.
Wild boar coming into Germany from Poland are believed to have spread the disease to the country’s eastern states of Brandenburg and Saxony, where thousand of cases in wild animals have occurred.
The latest case is likely to make it harder for Germany to regain its pork export status to some key destinations that still have bans in place, including China.
The German government has been seeking to contain and eradicate ASF in the east partly by reducing the wild boar population. But the scale of the wild boar population, which roam over large distances, has made containment difficult.