How to Quickly Restart Pig Farming After African Swine Fever Ends? Experts Explain the Difficulties and Give Advice

You should already have some understanding of the African swine fever situation. Perhaps many farmers have not been affected, but they should not let their guard down. So how should farming be quickly restored after African swine fever ends? What are the difficulties in restarting farming? Let us see what the experts say!

1. There are six major danger zones and difficulties, and four difficulties in restarting farming

If farmers are considering restarting farming, they must control the key risk points well, and at the same time they can draw on some of the common elements of successful cases. There are six major danger zones to pay special attention to when restarting farming:

First, the broader environment is poor, there are outbreaks nearby, and the virus contamination surface is wide, so it is not suitable for restarting farming;

Second, there are major flaws in the site selection of the pig farm, such as the pig farm being too close to major roads, slaughterhouses, manure treatment plants, animal trading markets, etc., which is not conducive to restarting farming;

Third, there is an unwillingness to invest in building the necessary facilities and equipment, such as dedicated vehicles for transporting pigs (preferably with air filtration systems), testing centers, pig loading platforms, washing and disinfection centers, disinfection passages, material transfer stations, and personnel isolation centers, making it difficult to block African swine fever;

Fourth, decision-makers and implementers are blindly optimistic, so the early preparations for restarting farming are insufficient and not meticulous, leading to unsuccessful restarting;

Fifth, sample collection and testing are not comprehensive or thorough enough (including production areas, living areas, office areas, and the environment, all of which must be fully sampled, and a professional testing laboratory must be established, using sensitive and specific testing methods);

Sixth, the work of restarting farming is not systematic, not solid, and fails to grasp the key points, leading to loopholes in many links in the restart process, such as hardware facilities not meeting the biosafety requirements for African swine fever prevention and control, supporting operating procedures being unreasonable (it is best to have expert review) or not being implemented properly (a complete supervision mechanism and reward and punishment system must be established), etc.

The difficulties in restarting farming on pig farms can be summarized as mainly including the following four aspects:

The decision-makers and main implementers on the pig farm lack sufficient attention to and scientific understanding of African swine fever; the decision-makers and main implementers on the pig farm lack scientific and systematic knowledge and culture of pig farm biosafety; the corresponding systems and standards cannot be effectively implemented and supervised; and there is a lack of performance management and humanistic care for employees.

The above factors will greatly reduce the effectiveness of the preparatory work before restarting farming on the pig farm, making it impossible to effectively identify and fill gaps, and any small oversight will make it difficult to successfully restart farming.

2. The process of restarting farming includes ten key links

A pig farm can only begin restarting farming after carrying out a large amount of meticulous and careful preparatory work. The preparatory work includes analysis of the causes of the outbreak (epidemic review), comprehensive washing, disinfection, and assessment of the pig farm, hardware upgrading and renovation (that is, the “structured resistance to African swine fever” advocated by Guangxi Yangxiang), optimization and standardization of operating procedures, raising sentinel pigs, pre-job training and assessment for personnel, and disease monitoring before pigs are introduced, etc. The links in restarting farming on a pig farm can be summarized as follows:

First, assessment of the broader environment (for example, whether the site meets the PIC thousand-point scoring requirements, and whether there have been outbreaks nearby recently); second, deep reflection and comprehensive review before restarting farming (analyzing the causes of the African swine fever outbreak and assessing the main risk points inside and outside the farm); third, identifying and filling gaps (upgrading and renovating facilities and equipment, and improving management systems and procedures); fourth, comprehensive washing and disinfection (disinfection + cleaning + disinfection + fumigation + drying); fifth, assessment after washing and disinfection (comprehensive sampling and professional testing); sixth, raising sentinel pigs and continuous dynamic monitoring; seventh, systematic pre-job training and assessment for personnel, complete emergency plans, and simulation drills; eighth, health checks and pathogen monitoring of pigs to be introduced; ninth, thorough preparation before pig transport (formulating a detailed transport plan) and full-process monitoring of the pig transport process; tenth, formulating emergency plans and conducting drills.

Each of the above links is very important. As long as there is a loophole in one of them, restarting farming may fail. Among them, hardware is the foundation, and software (strict management systems, complete operating procedures, and the overall quality of pig farm personnel) is the guarantee.

3. Four ways to find loopholes in each link

How can loopholes be found in each link? The four suggestions are as follows:

1. Self-inspection and self-correction:

Assign dedicated biosafety personnel, establish a biosafety self-inspection checklist, and regularly verify and improve it.

2. External audit:

Because staff on the farm may be so accustomed to things that they do not easily notice problems on the farm, external biosafety experts can be invited to audit the farm.

3. Stimulate internal motivation:

Establish a reward and incentive system to encourage employees to actively look for hidden dangers and loopholes.

4. Use smart equipment:

Pig farms with the conditions can set up monitoring or intelligent systems at major risk points and key operation nodes, regularly review and analyze them, and discover and improve problems.

Related reading: What are the symptoms of African swine fever? What happens if humans eat it? With treatment measures