In Sardinia it was eradicated after decades of blockade, in the Peninsula there is the first case of African swine fever on a domestic pig. And with a clear reversal of relations, it is now Sardinian farmers who are asking for checks on incoming meat, to avoid contagion.
The much feared jump of the Psa from wild boars to domestic pigs beyond the Tyrrhenian Sea was recorded on a farm in Montebello della Battaglia, in the province of Pavia. The official status of the first case of the terrible virus was given today after all the health checks ensured by the competent authorities of the Lombardy Region. From an initial reconstruction of the facts it seems that the ASF did not arrive in the farm through direct contact between wild boars and domestic pigs, since biosecurity measures would have been respected. It is therefore not excluded that the disease arrived through company vehicles or animal feed.
«In the light of the bad news arriving from northern Italy , we ask the Region and all its competent structures in the field of animal health and agriculture to initiate the necessary dialogue with the national government so that control activities on meat and above all on live pigs arriving in our ports»: the appeal is from the president of Confagricoltura Sardinia, Paolo Mele, who added: «In this condition we cannot afford to stand still. We must intervene immediately to secure our farms and the approximately 180,000 animals present in Sardinian farms. We have fought for over 40 years to eradicate ASF genotype 1 and now we risk being invaded by genotype 2, present on the peninsula and in a large part of central-eastern Europe and Asia, with very high levels of virulence and contagion capacity , far more devastating than the virus that Sardinia experienced from 1978 to 2019".
(Unioneonline/E.Fr.)
