The president of the Dominican Association of Pig Farms (Adogranja), Luis Brache, confirmed that swine fever continues to attack some farmsboth large and small pig farmers.
When asked about the situation that some pig farmers have denounced in the local media who assure that their pigs continue to die, Brache replied that the State, together with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA, in English) continues to work to eliminate those outbreaks that have allowed the disease to continue to spread.
The representative of the pig sector pointed out that the number of contaminated farms is expected to decrease so that the country can declare itself free of African swine feverfor which sanitary fences must be made for organized farms.
assured that the State has paid more than RD$1,000 million to producers affected throughout the country, although weekly there have been small cases that have been treated and eliminated by the authorities.
Brache said that reporting cases is a process because you have to take samples from the farms, certify that the pigs are affected by the disease, report it, and send the tests to the central laboratory.
“That’s where you see if it’s that, there are more diseases that can come out in the analysis,” he considered.
Said for the eradication of the virus, the effective work of the authorities will depend with respect to the farms that are positive and thus its spread is diminishing.
African Swine Fever (ASF) is a disease caused by a highly contagious virus exclusively from pigs, it does not represent any health risk in humans.
The Dominican Republic pork industry is one of the key sectors of the agrarian economy because creates more than 50,800 jobs a year. In 2020, the national production was 1,070,190 units, weighing close to 179 million pounds (just over 80.5 million kilos).
When pig production is measured at market prices, the estimated value for the year 2020 was about RD$14,400 millionaccording to information from the Dominican Agribusiness Board (JAD).
The JAD is currently running a program to substitute other animals and products for pig farmers affected by ASF.
The virus has impacted around 3,000 producers because more than 74,000 pigs were affectedpaying the government around RD$530 million.
.