Lack of training, awareness and knowledgeable personnel remain some of the ticking bombs in the pork industry in dealing with African swine fever, which has the potential to cripple the industry and lead to job losses.
Head of consumer assurance at the South Africa Pork Producers Organisation (Sappo), Dr Peter Evans, said for the past two years (2022-2021) 150 cases of African swine fever were reported. Of those cases, 104 were reported in 2021.
Speaking exclusively to Food For Mzansi, Evans said in their research at least three farm managers working in the ASF-positive compartments did not receive adequate training on the highly contagious viral disease.
Tiisetso Manoko: Let’s be frank, what’s the leading cause behind South Africa’s ASF outbreak problem?
Dr Peter Evans: Cheaply bought pigs. Sometimes these animals carry the disease.
When you look at the trading environment for less formal operations, traders will load for example 20 pigs on a bakkie and drive to different regions in an attempt to sell it. Very often, the people who sell these pigs have had one or two that died due to ASF and sell the ones that look healthy.
In this case, the disease spreads rapidly.
What’s your advice on AFS training to deal with the virus?
The training, interventions and awareness need to be appropriate for the level of farming that is being done. Most African swine fever outbreaks are occurring in less formal farming situations.
So training and the level of awareness in the poorer communities where the pigs are being kept for survival point of view, then from the point of view of running a business is a challenge.
People operating in less privileged communities might have less formal education and as such, the operations could be done for just survival.
When it comes to commercial farming, I do not see the government getting involved because they could use private consultants or take their farm managers to train. But in communities where the social-economic conditions are not good, that is where government needs to step in.
Many of them do not understand the impact it has on the economy. Some farmers are farming with the disease which leads to the outbreak. Once they find out about the disease, they sell the livestock which spreads even further.
Is South Africa’s state vet shortage adding pressure?
It is a well-known fact that there are many vacant state veterinarians and animal health practitioners. The latter plays a very critical role within the environment including the extension officers, so if the two could work together, a lot could be achieved and many outbreaks could be dealt with at an early stage.
Government really needs to invest in getting the right people to do the job with less focus on formal pig farming operations.
This is an all-hands-on-deck situation. What’s the role of organised agriculture, private companies, and the state?
I think it’s a combined effort where public-private partnerships need to kick in, where you might have a very formalised memorandum of understanding which will indicate who needs to do what, or a public-private partnership contract.
Otherwise, it can be a gentleman that indicates where which role player steps in to assist in situations like these.
We are happy that the reported cases went down in 2022. However, we are being realistic that the level of reporting may be less than it was in 2021 because it was a year when the outbreak caused havoc.
We are also happy that the message is slowly getting out that farmers and farm managers need to be a bit more cautious. One thing we need to highlight with seriousness is that there is so much finger-pointing at state vets and the government. However, the reality is that it is we citizens who know what the laws are but continue to break them.
The illegal movement of livestock is also something that needs to be addressed. I think society needs to understand the role we play and if we do not obey rules and regulations, we are affecting everyone in the economy. The citizens of the country need to take pride in our country and be patriotic about our country.
What can we expect from the pig industry this year?
A very tough year again. 2022 was extremely tough, the pork-to-feed ratio – the price that you get for the pork compared to the price you got to pay for the feed – was not balancing. The price of the feed was too high, and the price of the pork was too low.
There were reasonable pork prices while the feed prices stayed the same towards the end of last year, so some farmers would have done reasonably well from October until December.
But the outlook is that the pork price will be dropping and there is no real driver for the feed price to come down, so it is going to be a tough year.
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