'African swine fever in Vietnam is a national disaster'

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) believes that the outbreak of African swine fever in Vietnam should be considered a national disaster. The virus is spreading at a rapid pace.

Vietnamese are mostly dependent on pig production and about 2,5 million inhabitants of the country are themselves active as pig farmers. If production decreases in large numbers as a result of animal disease, this will have enormous consequences for a considerable part of the population.

That is also why the FAO believes that Vietnam declare the situation surrounding African swine fever a national disaster. This also gives the Vietnamese government special powers, making it faster and easier to intervene in an emergency.

Thousands of animals culled
There are already 239 outbreaks of African swine fever reported. To prevent further spread of the animal disease, Vietnam has culled 25.000 animals. This is also considerably less than in China. There are currently 113 outbreaks reported, but more than 1 million pigs have already been culled.

What is striking is that a number of completely isolated cases of African swine fever have been found in Vietnam. For example, on March 13, an outbreak was identified at a pig farm about 350 kilometers from the nearest outbreak. This suggests that the spread is much larger than reported.

Tim Roetman

Tim Roetman has been working as a junior editor at livestock farming since November 2018 Boerenbusiness† He mainly writes about (price) developments in the pig and dairy market.

t.roetman@boerenbusiness. Nl

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