Germany has fences, drones, hunters and sniffer dogs ready to fight the disease that threatens Europe’s largest herd of pigs.
The detection of the corpse of a wild boar infected with a virus is almost 40 km away. from the border put the German authorities on high alert.
Now there is no doubt that ASF will go to Germany, it is only a matter of time. The virus can survive in mud on vehicle wheels for up to 100 days, said a representative of the German Hunting Federation, Thorsten Reinvald.
Hunters are ready to destroy any wild boar that enters German territory, but they are not alone in this fight against a disease that can kill millions of pigs on farms.
Several German regions currently use different methods to track the virus, and in Sarah, which is located near France, has a special unit of six service dogs, designed to search for dead and sick boars.
A pig is the only pet that escapes and survives in the wild. It grows with thick bristles and runs wild.
In Saxony, which borders Poland, hunters, veterinarians and emergency workers are trained to take practical measures on the ground. Using drones and infrared cameras, they simulate outbreaks of infection and how to eliminate it.
Further north, the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern region bought a 50-kilometer mobile electric fence for 50 thousand euros in the hope of limiting the invasion of wild boar from Poland.
Direct speech: “The likelihood of infection from sick wild boars crossing the border is very high, especially today, as a result of human control,” concluded Sandra Bloom, director of the national laboratory for swine fever at the Friedrich-Leffler Institute.
The disease has been present in Poland since 2014, but has also affected other countries of Eastern Europe: Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Slovakia, Romania.
- Earlier, we reported that 9 infected boars were found in Poland near the border with Germany.
- Japan is preparing a series of measures that will increase biosecurity at pig farms in the event of an outbreak of ASF.
- Despite laboratory tests showing that there is no African swine fever in Southeast Asia, more than 4,000 pigs have died.
- We also wrote that in Russia there was a discussion of the epizootic situation in ASF and the causes of its outbreaks in the country.
- As African swine fever spreads across many Asian and European countries, pig owners in New Zealand are vigilant.
