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A study conducted by the State of Kansas confirms that African swine fever can be easily transmitted through the natural consumption of contaminated food and fluids. This unique study highlights the essential need for biosecurity of animal feed in the hog industry.
Megan Niederwerder, Assistant Professor of Diagnostic Medicine and Pathobiology at Kansas State University, College of Veterinary Medicine, leads a team studying how the ongoing strain of ASD, Georgia 2007, could spread in animal feed and feed. ingredients. The latest publication of the team details the dose needed to transmit the disease.
"Our research is the first to demonstrate that ASF can be transmitted through the natural consumption of contaminated whole foods in the absence of infectious pork products," says Niederwerder. "Although feed and feed ingredients are a less recognized route of transmission for African swine fever, the global distribution of food ingredients makes it an important route to consider for cross-border introduction. virus."
The researchers found that the level of virus required to cause an infection in a fluid was extremely low, demonstrating the high infectivity of oral PPA. Although higher levels of virus were needed to cause infection through feed, repeated exposure could make contaminated food a more important risk factor.
"By working with the statistician Trevor Hefley, we were able to model the probability of infection with African swine fever when pigs consumed a lot of contaminated food over time," says Niederwerder. "The likelihood of infection has increased dramatically after even 10 exposures or the consumption of 1 kilogram of contaminated food." Multiple exposure modeling increases the applicability of our experimental data to what's happening. would produce on the farm. "
Agricultural processing methods of feed ingredients may expose them to a risk of contamination in countries where ASF is active. In China, it is common to dry crops on the roads. These roads could be contaminated by truck traffic containing infected pigs. Another potential source of transmission of viral particles to food is the treatment of ingredients on contaminated material, she adds.
"Millions of kilograms of ingredients for animal feed are imported from countries in which the African swine fever virus is currently circulating," Niederwerder said. "Our previous work has shown that a wide range of ingredients for animal feed promotes virus survival after exposure to environmental conditions simulating cross-border shipping."
It can be argued that ASF is the biggest threat to world pig production, says Niederwerder.
"In the absence of vaccine or effective treatment, the overriding goal of disease-free countries is to prevent the introduction of the virus," she said. "We hope this research will further define possible pathways for spreading the disease and develop mitigation strategies to prevent introduction into the American pig herd."
Now that the group has confirmed the transmission of ASF through forage and identified the oral dose needed for the infection, the next step will be to identify ways to reduce or eliminate this risk, including chemical additives, storage time, heat treatments or others.
The study "An infectious dose of African swine fever virus when consumed naturally in liquids or in animal feed" was published in Emerging Infectious Diseases. The study was funded by the National Pork Checkoff and the National Fund for Bio Facilities and Agro-Defense of the State of Kansas. Ana-Stoian, Raymond "Bob" Rowland, Steve Dritz, Vlad Petrovan, Laura Constance, Jordan Gebhardt, Matthew Olcha, Cbadandra Jones, Jason Woodworth, Ying Fang, Jia Liang and Trevor Hefley are co-authors of the publication.
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