PIG FLU FEARS
African swine fever reaches EUROPE after devastating Chinese pig farms
The virus has contaminated a farm in Romania containing 135,000 pigs - with officials blaming water taken from the Danube river for its spread
AFRICAN swine fever has been detected in the second-largest pig farm in Europe just days after China slaughtered thousands of hogs in a bid to contain its spread.
The virus has contaminated a farm in Romania containing 135,000 pigs - with officials blaming water taken from the Danube river for its spread.
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Gicu Dragan, from the Bucharest Diagnostic and Animal Health Institute, told local media thousands of pigs would now be culled.
He said: "The Bucharest Diagnostic and Animal Health Institute confirmed the existence of the African swine fever virus at TEBU Consult, the second largest farm in Europe where there are 135,000.
"I sent the samples to the national reference laboratory on Friday morning and the results confirmed the existence of the virus, and on Monday we will go to the euthanasia of the pigs on this farm.
"I think the animals are affected by the Danube water, and the farms are supplied with water from the Danube."
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The disease is transmitted by ticks and direct contact between animals, and can also travel via contaminated food, animal feed and people moving from one place to another. There is no vaccine, but it is not harmful to humans.
Meanwhile, the strain that has struck China is similar to the one that has spread across Russia, Georgia and Estonia over the past decade, a senior veterinarian at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says.
The virus which causes African swine fever is hardy and has been shown to remain infectious for at least 30 days in uninhabited pig pens, over four months in pork products, including salted dried hams, and indefinitely in frozen pig carcasses.
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The Swine Health Information Center said: "The hardiness of this virus, along with the fact it is found throughout the pig as well as its faeces and saliva, means these leaps of the disease across large distances are possible."
Authorities in the eastern province of Zhejiang said they would slaughter 1,332 hogs and seal off an area within 1.8miles from the pig farming community in the city of Yueqing, where the outbreak was discovered.
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The local government said in a statement that it had also banned the movement of animals that could be easily infected inside and outside the affected area, and closed some live hog trading markets and slaughterhouses following the outbreak.
The latest cull will bring the total number of pigs deliberately killed to prevent he spread of the highly contagious disease to over 25,000.
The discovery and two other cases reported in Henan in central China and Jiangsu province to the north of Zhejiang are thousands of kilometres away from the first outbreak.
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