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African Swine Fever threatening pork farmers

Harry Galbraith
good pigs
Warning for NZ Pork farmers as African Swine Fever lingers  Wikipedia commons

African Swine Fever is threatening to enter New Zealand shores and haunt kiwi pork farmers

African Swine Fever is a deadly disease that only affects pigs, the disease has no current cure.

The disease is travelling through Asia and Europe and is threatening to enter the New Zealand shores.

NZ Pork's, General Manager, David Baines is insisting that kiwis who are travelling in Asia and Europe don't come into contact with the disease and bring it back to New Zealand with them.

The disease has taken out an estimated half of China's pork production.

Baines believes that if the virus hits NZ shores it could put our meat industry at risk.

Baines also said " This is a major pandemic affecting the world and NZ must do everything it can to protect the industry.

It's not just the pork industry that will be affected by it, but also the farmers themselves.

Jason Palmer, a Canterbury Pork farmer, says the key thing for this disease is that New Zealand pork farmers have never experienced this disease before.

Palmer also says that it can be very damaging to the New Zealand economy if farmers are having to kill off their way of an income.

Biosecurity is one of the only ways this disease can be stopped entering our country and our pork farms.

Palmer says that they have a shower complex at his pork farm which visitors to the farm must use if they are going to come into contact with the pigs.

According to Palmer, one way the disease could be eradicated in New Zealand would be if MPI shut the farm down and kill all the affected pigs.

There have been no cases of this disease in New Zealand yet, just a warning to be prepared just in case.