scholarly journals Risk and Mitigation of African Swine Fever Virus in Feed

Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 792
Author(s):  
Megan Niederwerder

Since the 2013 introduction of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus into the United States (U.S.), feed and feed ingredients have been recognized as potential routes for the introduction and transmission of foreign animal diseases of swine. Feed ingredients for swine diets are commodities traded worldwide, and the U.S. imports thousands of metric tons of feed ingredients each year from countries with circulating foreign animal diseases. African swine fever (ASF) is the most significant foreign animal disease threat to U.S. swine production, and the recent introduction of ASF into historically negative countries has heightened the risk for further spread. Laboratory investigations have characterized the stability of the ASF virus (ASFV) in feed ingredients subjected to transoceanic shipment conditions, ASFV transmissibility through the natural consumption of plant-based feed, and the mitigation potential of certain feed additives to inactivate ASFV in feed. This review describes the current knowledge of feed as a risk for swine viruses and the opportunities for mitigating the risk to protect U.S. pork production and the global swine population from ASF and other foreign animal diseases.

2020 ◽  
Vol 98 (Supplement_4) ◽  
pp. 43-43
Author(s):  
Scott C Merrill ◽  
Christopher Koliba ◽  
Gabriela Bucini ◽  
Eric Clark ◽  
Luke Trinity ◽  
...  

Abstract Disease and its consequences result in social and economic impacts to the US animal livestock industry, ranging from losses in human capital to economic costs in excess of a billion dollars annually. Impacts would dramatically escalate if a devastating disease like Foot and Mouth Disease or African Swine Fever virus were to emerge in the United States. Investing in preventative biosecurity can reduce the likelihood of disease incursions and their negative impact on our livestock industry, yet uncertainty persists with regards to developing an effective biosecurity structure and culture. Here we show the implications of human behavior and decision making for biosecurity effectiveness, from the operational level to the owner/managerial level and finally to the systems level. For example, adjustments to risk messaging strategies could double worker compliance with biosecurity practices at the operational level. The improvement of our risk communication strategy may increase willingness to invest in biosecurity. Furthermore, the adaptation of policies could nudge behavior so that we observe a short disease outbreak followed by a quick eradication instead of a pandemic. Our research shows how the emergence of now-endemic diseases, such as Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus, cannot be adequately modeled without the use of a human behavioral component. Focusing solely on any one sector or level of the livestock system is not sufficient to predict emergent disease patterns and their social and economic impact on livestock industries. These results provide insight toward developing more effective risk mitigation strategies and ways to nudge behavior toward more disease resilient systems.


Author(s):  
Zhichun Yan ◽  
Yakuan Huang ◽  
Gordon Spronk ◽  
Scott Dee

During the acute phase of the African Swine Fever Virus (ASFV) epidemic in China, complete feed, and feed ingredients from three mills were tested for ASFV DNA by PCR. Across mills, the percentage of positive sample pools detected in complete feed ranged from 0.5% to 1.2%, and from 0.2% to 1.8% in feed ingredients, including positive pools of wheat, rice, corn, and soy samples. This is the first report of ASFV contamination in feed under commercial conditions in China.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Jurado ◽  
Lina Mur ◽  
María Sol Pérez Aguirreburualde ◽  
Estefanía Cadenas-Fernández ◽  
Beatriz Martínez-López ◽  
...  

Abstract African swine fever causes substantial economic losses in the swine industry in affected countries. Traditionally confined to Africa with only occasional incursions into other regions, ASF began spreading into Caucasian countries and Eastern Europe in 2007, followed by Western Europe and Asia in 2018. Such a dramatic change in the global epidemiology of ASF has resulted in concerns that the disease may continue to spread into disease-free regions such as the US. In this study, we estimated the risk of introduction of ASF virus into the US through smuggling of pork in air passenger luggage. Results suggest that the mean risk of ASFV introduction into the US via this route has increased by 183.33% from the risk estimated before the disease had spread into Western Europe or Asia. Most of the risk (67.68%) was associated with flights originating from China and Hong Kong, followed by the Russian Federation (26.92%). Five US airports accounted for >90% of the risk. Results here will help to inform decisions related to the design of ASF virus surveillance strategies in the US.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (7) ◽  
pp. 512-524 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Golnar ◽  
Estelle Martin ◽  
Jillian D. Wormington ◽  
Rebekah C. Kading ◽  
Pete D. Teel ◽  
...  

Pathogens ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 977
Author(s):  
Jolene Carlson ◽  
Melina Fischer ◽  
Laura Zani ◽  
Michael Eschbaumer ◽  
Walter Fuchs ◽  
...  

Understanding African swine fever virus (ASFV) transmission is essential for strategies to minimize virus spread during an outbreak. ASFV can survive for extended time periods in animal products, carcasses, and the environment. While the ASFV genome was found in environments around infected farms, data on the virus survival in soil are scarce. We investigated different soil matrices spiked with ASFV-positive blood from infected wild boar to see if ASFV can remain infectious in the soil beneath infected carcasses. As expected, ASFV genome detection was possible over the entire sampling period. Soil pH, structure, and ambient temperature played a role in the stability of infectious ASFV. Infectious ASFV was demonstrated in specimens originating from sterile sand for at least three weeks, from beach sand for up to two weeks, from yard soil for one week, and from swamp soil for three days. The virus was not recovered from two acidic forest soils. All risk mitigation experiments with citric acid or calcium hydroxide resulted in complete inactivation. In conclusion, the stability of infectious ASFV is very low in acidic forest soils but rather high in sandy soils. However, given the high variability, treatment of carcass collection points with disinfectants should be considered.


2020 ◽  
Vol 98 (Supplement_4) ◽  
pp. 42-43
Author(s):  
Lee Schulz ◽  
Glynn Tonsor

Abstract African swine fever and many other livestock diseases present a host of challenges with a myriad of private and public good considerations. Chief among these challenges is identifying what drives livestock producer, self-protecting biosecurity efforts. Biosecurity adoption is an example of a private behavior that generates positive spillovers affecting the supply of a public good, that is, disease prevention. Encouraging producers to undertake specific biosecurity practices has proven useful in containing previous outbreaks of livestock disease in the United States, such as porcine epidemic diarrhea virus. Motivating producers to change production and management practices when a disease is not currently present in the United States can be much more difficult because of the (perceived or actual) lower probability of risk. National surveys of livestock producers were conducted to gain insight into decisions regarding ongoing and prospective biosecurity investment. Findings suggest producer and operation characteristics and diverse views on expected frequency of disease outbreaks, anticipated disease duration, and possible financial impact on operations underlie current and likely future biosecurity adoption. Furthermore, results point to both policy (e.g., indemnity provisions and cost sharing strategies) and market signals (e.g. market access and/or premiums paid or discounts incurred) from upstream livestock buyers have potential to incentivize biosecurity efforts.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Warr ◽  
Caitlin Newman ◽  
Nicky Craig ◽  
Ingrida Vendelė ◽  
Rizalee Pilare ◽  
...  

AbstractAfrican Swine Fever virus (ASFV) is the causative agent of a deadly, panzootic disease, infecting wild and domesticated suid populations. Contained for a long time to the African continent, an outbreak of a particularly infectious variant in Georgia in 2007 initiated the spread of the virus around the globe, severely impacting pork production and local economies. The virus is highly contagious and has a mortality of up to 100% in domestic pigs. It is critical to track the spread of the virus, detect variants associated with pathology, and implement biosecurity measures in the most effective way to limit its spread. Due to its size and other limitations, the 170-190kbp large DNA virus has not been well sequenced with fewer than 200 genome sequences available in public repositories. Here we present an efficient, low-cost method of sequencing ASFV at scale. The method uses tiled PCR amplification of the virus to achieve greater coverage, multiplexability and accuracy on a portable sequencer than achievable using shotgun sequencing. We also present Lilo, a pipeline for assembling tiled amplicon data from viral or microbial genomes without relying on polishing against a reference, allowing for structural variation and hypervariable region assembly other methods fail on. The resulting ASFV genomes are near complete, lacking only parts of the highly repetitive 3’- and 5’telomeric regions, and have a high level of accuracy. Our results will allow sequencing of ASFV at optimal efficiency and high throughput to monitor and act on the spread of the virus.


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