WILMINGTON, Ohio – African swine fever (ASF) is considered one of the scariest and potentially most damaging diseases worldwide for hogs. Fortunately for the United States and Canada, no outbreaks have ever been reported.

In July, the USDA’s Foreign Animal Disease Diagnosis Laboratory confirmed the first case of ASF in the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean region, just 700 miles from the United States.

The Dominican Republic culled more than 65,700 pigs last year as it tried to avoid a repeat of a 1970s outbreak that led it to exterminate its entire pig stock of more than 1.4 million animals. ASF is now present in 50 countries across Africa, Europe and Asia.

Last month, Haiti reported its own outbreak. As those two nations share an island, transmission is perhaps not a surprise, and no other outbreaks have yet been confirmed in the Caribbean or on mainland North America.

To forewarn swine producers in the Buckeye State, the Ohio Department of Agriculture, USDA and The Ohio State University are sponsoring an informative program for small swine producers entitled “If African Swine Fever Comes to Your Neighborhood, Are You Prepared?”

The meetings will be Feb. 2 at the Champaign County Extension Office, 1512 S. U.S. Highway 68, Suite B100 in Urbana, and Feb. 16 at the Putnam County Extension Office, 1206 E. 2nd Street in Ottawa.

“With this program, producers, large or small, can learn the signs and what to do if African swine fever or another foreign animal disease affects your herd,” said Tony Nye, OSU Extension specialist in Clinton County. “This program addresses the steps you should take, the state and federal response and biosecurity planning required.

“There has been a catastrophic disease to pork production worldwide and we here in North America have been fortunate not to have experienced it yet. It is not if but when it gets here that has the pork industry nervous. We need to learn what will be the necessary steps to get control of it quickly and to prevent pork production devastation here in Ohio and in the United States.”

ASF is an abnormally destructive virus, typically causing death within just a few days of infection. It’s not dangerous to humans, but it spreads so quickly and so thoroughly that outbreaks are treated extremely seriously. When it was first found in Europe in the 1950s, widespread slaughtering was used to halt the spread of the virus. The same thing happened in China in the mid-2000s when it was first found there.

According to Nye, ASF is a terrifying prospect economically, not just from the lost revenue from slaughtered hogs but also because many nations will simply not import hogs from any country known to host an outbreak, for fear of transmission.

“Today’s global movements of people and pigs pose greater risks to herd health than ever before,” Nye said. “This makes implementing on-farm disease prevention and mitigation strategies critical to maintaining overall herd health and preventing the introduction or spread of disease.

“Keep in mind, if this disease enters the U.S., it will shut down not just commercial pork production, but also branded pork production such as pasture pork along with purebred and show pig operations as well. That is why this meeting is so important to everyone.”

ASF does not affect humans. It is not a public health threat or a food-safety concern.

There are numerous ways pigs can contract the disease. ASF can be spread through ticks, live or dead pigs and pork products, contaminated feed and by humans. In fact, humans can carry the virus on their shoes or clothing, which means traveling from a country that has African swine fever to one that does not could lead to new outbreaks without proper biosecurity practices.

ASF can survive for days on contacted surfaces like vehicles or equipment, for weeks in raw meat and months in frozen meat products. It has an incubation period of 5-21 days, and infected animals do not always show signs of the virus but can continue to shed the virus for an extended period.

If ASF were to hit the United States, pork exports to other countries would stop. The National Pork Board estimates that could cost the U.S. pork industry as much as $8 billion a year.

By the middle of 2019, 13,355 pigs had died outside the United States due to ASF, and 1,204,281 pigs had to be culled to halt the virus’ spread.

In 2020, the virus slipped into China from eastern Europe. From there, it reached Vietnam, Cambodia, North Korea, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines, South Korea and more recently, East Timor and southeast Asian countries.

The U.S. government has strict animal-health and import requirements that seek to prevent the entry of ASF into the country. The USDA and Customs and Border Protection are training and using beagles at airports and seaports to sniff out food products that may contain the virus.