Pigs culled in Ukraine – defending industry from ASF

08-12-2011 | Home | News

In the Lugansk region of Ukraine 14 thousand pigs have been culled in order to prevent the spread of African Swine Fever (ASF) from the border regions of the Russian Federation. This has been recently announced by the deputy head of Agricultural Development Department, Ivan Kolesnik.

He noted that over the same period last year, the number of pigs at the farms in the Lugansk region decreased by 35%.

“The pigs at the farms declined overally by 35% to 50.6 thousand. This figure is presented due to population growth containment and the fact that we had to cull 14 thousand pigs in order to prevent the spread of African Swine Fever. This decision was not easy, but taking into account the risk of carrying of infection, it is justified ,” said Kolesnik.

He noted that in the first quarter of 2012 agricultural enterprises plan to increase livestock again. “ASF outbreaks in the Russian Federation may continue for many more years, but this does not mean that we should cull all our livestock. We are currently developing measures to increase the implementation of sanitary and epidemiological requirements in our enterprises,” stated Kolesnik.

The State Service of Veterinary Medicine of Ukraine has already strengthened measures at pig complexes because of existing a serious danger of ASF outbreak on the territory of Ukraine. Similar measures of culling pig’s in the near future will also occur in Kharkiv and Sumy regions of Ukraine. About 35 thousand of pigs will be eliminated in total.

(By Vladislav Vorotnikov)