DES MOINES, Iowa — When African swine fever appears, producers will face the sort of shock they experienced in 2020.
“The COVID packing plant backup and shutdown gives us a preview of the impacts that can have,” said Dr. Anna Forseth in an interview at the World Pork Expo.
ASF has spread across Asia into Europe, all the way to the Atlantic coast, and sent chills down the spines of the North American hog industry when it appeared in the Caribbean.
Pork industries in Canada, the United States and Mexico have been working feverishly to prepare, but whenever it appears, the short-term impact will be severe.
“We anticipate the implementation of a 72-hour shutdown, a 72-hour standstill,” said Forseth.
All live swine and dead stock movements will be banned, giving state and federal officials time to assess the outbreak and how to contain it.
Whichever country the disease appears in will be identified specifically, but in terms of offshore trade, “a detection in North America is going to have an impact to some degree.”
Hog farms and packing plants can’t hang on to pigs for too long before experiencing severe problems. Hog barns don’t have extra room for market weight hogs since smaller feeder pigs are right behind them, fattening up and needing more and more space.
Weanling barns have the same situation. Piglets must be moved to feeder barns as new babies are born and require space.
Sows need farrowing space as gestation concludes.
Packing plants need pig barns to stay in operation, and need to move freshly slaughtered meat into storage or further processing.
Regardless of anybody’s needs, all parts of the hog and pork industry need to be prepared for a 2020-like shutdown because that is almost certainly the sort of situation that will occur the first day a foreign animal disease like ASF is identified in North America.
