African Swine Fever – Page 7 – Swine in Minnesota

Podcast: Conversations around African Swine Fever

Happy holidays everyone! The swine group at the University of Minnesota wishes you the most wonderful time, surrounded by friends and family.

Thank you for your interest in this archived blog post. The link below may not work anymore, but you can access older episodes of “At the Meeting” at the podcast’s website!

The latest episode of At the meeting… sees our hosts and their invited speaker talk about African Swine Fever: what is the current situation?

Frequency and origin of live imports of breeding-stock pigs to the United States

This week, we are sharing a report from the MSHMP team in collaboration with the Swine Health Information Center regarding the origin of the pigs that are imported for breeding purposes.

Key Points

International live pig transport is a possible route for disease entry into the U.S.
The first step in assessing this risk is to categorize and analyze breeding stock import data
Small numbers of imported breeding pigs have come from a variety of countries, but the majority come from Canada

First Oral Vaccination of Eurasian Wild Boar Against African Swine Fever Virus Genotype II

This research summary is shared by Prof. Sanchez-Vizcaino and his team at the Compultense University of Madrid.

Key points

A weakly virulent, non-hemadsorbing ASFV strain was isolated in 2017 from a hunted wild boar in Latvia (Strain ID: Lv17/WB/Rie1) with the potential of being used as a vaccine.
Oral vaccination of wild boars with strain Lv17/WB/Rie1 protects animals against a virulent hemadsorbing (ASF genotype II).
Contact animals exposed indirectly to the vaccinated animals were also protected against the ASF virulent strain

UMN swine faculty interviewed on African swine fever

Last week, Drs. John Deen and Jerry Torrison were interviewed about African Swine Fever, the virus decimating the Chinese hog industry. They shared why it is a concern for our swine farmers in the Midwest, and how the University of Minnesota is participating in the effort to prepare for it.

Watch the full video on the KTTC website.

SHIC and the UMN Help Uncover Risk for ASF Introduction into the US via Air Passengers’ Luggage

In 2018, African swine fever (ASF) spread into Western Europe, and, for the first time, into China and Southeast Asia. Such dramatic change in the global epidemiological conditions of ASF has resulted in concerns the disease may continue to spread into disease-free regions, such as the US. An analysis funded by the Swine Health Information Center and National Pork Board estimated the risk for introduction of ASF virus into the US through smuggling of pork in air passengers’ luggage. The analysis was conducted by the Center for Animal Health and Food Safety, College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota (OIE collaborating center on capacity building) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain (OIE reference laboratory for ASF).