The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) has organised a meeting for the Oxford pig club to help equip those working in the pig industry with biosecurity and disease prevention guidelines for African swine fever (ASF).

The ‘Keep disease out of your pig farm’ meetings will feature video footage from both indoor and outdoor units to show biosecurity options across different systems.

The meeting will take place tomorrow (Monday, November 28) from 7:00p.m to 9.30p.m at the Shillingford Bridge Hotel, Wallingford, Oxfordshire.

The aim of the meeting is to provide farmers with ideas that can be implemented on their own farms to help prevent the spread of diseases such as ASF and porcine epidemic diarrhoea (PED).

AHDB’s pig clubs meet during the autumn and winter seasons to provide commercial pig farmers the opportunity to meet each other, hear from guest speakers and discuss issues relevant to the pig sector.

Previous meetings in October and earlier this month have involved the Midlands, Exeter, Cornwall and Gloucester pig clubs.

Image from AHDB

Registering for the meetings is necessary and more information on this can be found on the AHDB website.

African swine fever

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has urged those in the pig sector to be conscious of ASF as the virus continues to spread in parts of Europe, Asia and Africa.

The disease has been confirmed in wild boar, as well as on farms, smallholdings and in pet pigs.

The department said it is monitoring the situation with the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) to assess the risk the disease poses to the UK pig population.

ASF has been confirmed in areas in the following European countries:

  • Bulgaria;
  • Estonia;
  • Germany;
  • Greece;
  • Hungary;
  • Italy;
  • Latvia;
  • Lithuania;
  • Moldova;
  • North Macedonia;
  • Poland;
  • Romania;
  • Russia;
  • Sardinia;
  • Serbia;
  • Slovakia;
  • Ukraine.

AFRICAN SWINE FEVER AHDB PIGS