WUR presented the conclusion of its study on Romania's ASF case
An independent study conducted by the Wageningen University and Research (WUR) on Romania's ASF case showed that the consumption of pork has increased in the last years, accounting for 53% of the animal protein consumed by the inhabitants. However, more than 30% of the pig meat consumed in the East European country comes from backyard farms. "It can be tradition, as your famous Christmas pig but it also represents a way to sell pug meat in the local market", observed Ron Bergevoet, a senior researcher at WUR. In his observations, prof. Bergevoet mentioned that, prior to the ASF outbreak in Romania (2018), despite increased production of pigs the country's self-sufficiency on pork was decreasing. "That means that in 2017, only 6 in 10 kilos of pork consumed in Romania originated from Romanian produced pigs", he mentioned. By now, the self-sufficiency rate dropped by 20% due to all kinds of measures related to ASF control.
In his research, Ron Bergevoet discovered that 1.3 million households in Romania that are keeping between 1 and 100 pigs in backyard farms are responsible for 56% of the pig meat produced in the country, while the number of commercial farms is 230, responsible for 44% of the output. That makes it difficult for the authorities to control the sector. Much more than that, commercial farms are placed in areas where there was already a large concentration of backyard pigs and small farms, which is also a challenge for the sector.
In his recommendation for the Romanian authorities on how to deal with the ASF situation in the country, prof. Bergevoet mentioned the last outbreak of foot and mouth disease from the Netherland, when perfectly healthy animals, even vaccinated against the disease were culled to prevent the spreading of the virus in the future. "Sometimes we used armed forces, police and military, to take the animals out of the farms and cull them. That caused a lot of distress and anger between farmers. There are decisions to be taken by central authorities and other decisions that must be adopted by local authorities. Hard measures imposed by the governments usually scares people and they would want to move their animals or to slaughter them. Control of the movement of the animals must be in place but also the intetion to properly compensate for the loss of an animal. In the Netherlands, we observed that the tendency to remove the animal or to slaughter decreased after the government started to pay compensations," he concluded.
However, the situation is different when you have a commercial farms which is located inside the protection and surveillance area constituted around a farm with an outbreak. "If you have a commercial farm and you have to wait 40 days to see what happens with your animals, well.. in two weeks you don't have where to put your piglets", the professor added.
Basically, the report shows that due to the structure of the industry, containing the virus looks like an impossible mission for the authorities. Doubled by the slow pace in taking effective biosecurity measures in protecting the farms and communities has lead to the curret situation in Romania, where more than 60% of the country is reporting on a weekly/monthly basis new outbreas and where the disease has become endemic in wild boar population. Additional measures are required to control the disease, otherwise, the country's dependence on pork imports will increase further, putting at risk the future of the industry. Some of these additional measureas refer to the massive culling of pigs in areas where the disease seems to be out of control, a measure that was avoided by the authorities due to political reasons and the intention to avoid social unrest. The image pictured for the Romanian swine sector is similar to the situation reported in several Asian countries impacted by ASF outbreaks such as Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, etc. For these countries, experts from OIE and FAO have already expressed their doubts regarding the chances of successfully containing the spread of the disease due to large number of backyard exploitations.
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