Farmers ordered to cull their pigs as risk of swine-fever grows

The popular pig-slaughtering feasts which usually take place in February are going to start early for some pig-breeders this year. Farmers living in the area infested with swine-fever have been ordered to cull their animals in view of a growing risk of the disease spreading from wild boar to pigs in the region.

Photo: justifd4evr via Foter.com / CC BY-NC

It almost seemed that the Zlín region, which has fought against swine fever infestation in the local wild boar population for several months, had finally managed to get the problem under control. However now, the local veterinary authorities have announced that due to wild boar migration in the rutting season the measures adopted – which include electric fences cordoning off an area of 60 square km – are insufficient.

In view of a heightened risk of the disease spreading to pig farms and the animals of individual breeders, famers in the high-risk area have been asked to cull their animals by December 1st.

The process will be carefully monitored. The local mayors of the fifty of so villages located in the high risk area have been requested to compile a list of all the farmers this concerns and hand it over to the veterinary authorities by November 15th. And the day of the planned slaughter will have to be reported to the authorities three day in advance.

Hunters in the area are still striving to reduce the number of wild boar in the high-risk region. 270 of them have been hunted down in the past four months. However the disease has not abated and, since the beginning of the month of November, 15 infected animals were found dead in the region. Vets say the virus is extremely resistant and that some of the boar which survived the infection could spread the disease to other regions as happened in Poland and Latvia.