Culls happened on 12 farms within the area of Lombardy
21 September 2023
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Nearly 34,000 pigs at 12 farms within the northern Italian area of Lombardy were culled to counter the unfold of African swine fever (ASF), Reuters reported, bringing up a spokesperson for the area on Wednesday.
Lombardy is the Italian area with the biggest selection of bred pigs. The outbreak seems to mark an intensification of a wave of the illness first detected in Italy in 2022.
“In Lombardy there are part of the pigs bred in Italy, round 5 million out of a complete of 10 million Italian pigs,” the regional govt spokesperson mentioned.
“Our goal is to extinguish this outbreak .. in order that the issue does now not grow to be a threat for the availability chain of all the Italian sector,” the spokesperson mentioned, including that the danger of an additional unfold turns out to were avoided for now.
African swine fever is risk free to people however regularly deadly to pigs, resulting in monetary losses for farmers. It originated in Africa earlier than spreading to Europe and Asia and has killed loads of thousands and thousands of pigs international.
Since 2022, African swine fever in Italy has principally hit wild boars, with a couple of remoted instances in pigs, mentioned Francesco Feliziani, head of the Nationwide Centre for Swine Flu.
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