The seasonality of African swine fever outbreaks is nothing new. Historical data shows that a repeated scenario every year is a series of outbreaks, usually starting in June and lasting until September. Over 90% of all outbreaks of the disease recorded in Poland in the last decade occurred during this period.
The causes of seasonality of ASF in pigs are not fully understood, but it is most often said that this seasonality is the result of several factors. These include the period of increased field work at that time, the use of grain and straw infected with dead wild boar tissues on farms, and more intensive human activity in forest areas than in other seasons.
The worst situation since 2021
Unfortunately, this year did not bring any surprises in terms of the occurrence of the seasonality phenomenon itself, and its scale should be very worrying for everyone. At the time of writing this text, we have 44 ASF outbreaks "on the counter", which is the most since 2021. Yes, there were years with a much larger number of outbreaks (in 2018 and in 2020-2021, over a hundred infected herds were confirmed in Poland annually), but both the number of cases this year and the place of outbreak indicate that as a country we are heading in the wrong direction in the fight against the plague. More information on the summary of the decade of the fight against ASF can be found in the October issue of Farmer. Today, we will only summarize this year's course of the seasonal occurrence of the plague.
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Farmer's Eye: It's hard to be optimistic in the fight against ASF