OK, so we're settling out to about 160 members so far, which is great to have so many of you here this lunchtime in the UK. Just to let you all know that we have disabled the chat of their topic, for, for this lecture this lunchtime. If you do have any questions, please feel free to, to pop them into the Q&A box, and we'll, we'll look at addressing them at the, the end of the, the talk.

I am delighted to have our two speakers join us from, opposite sides of the globe, for this lunchtime webinar that's sponsored by the Pig Vet Society. So Susanna Williamson leads the government funded pig disease scanning surveillance in England and Wales, and is the lead vet for the Pig Expert group at the Animal and Plant Health Agency. She works with colleagues in the APHA practitioners and the pig industry to develop and deliver surveillance for pig endemic diseases and new and emerging threats.

This includes pig disease investigations and threat characterization. And assisting with training and developing of expertise. Susannah has been the president of the Pig Veterinary Society in 2016 through 2017 and is a member of the PVS Executive Committee, the Pig Health and Welfare Council and its surveillance and antimicrobial use subgroups.

John Carr started learning the ropes about pigs at the age of 11. He qualified as a vet in 1982, and after 5 years in general practise, he returned to university to complete a Liver Hume residency in pigs and a PhD in urinary tract problems of pigs at Liverpool, specialising in microbiology and pathology. He has a diploma in pig medicine and is a diplomat of the European College of Pig Health Management.

He's recognised by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons as a pig specialist. He's taught production medicine at several universities in the UK, Liverpool and the Royal Veterinary College in London, and in the US at North Carolina and Iowa State and at Murdoch and Townsville Universities in Australia. John runs a consultancy practise with clients in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa.

He currently teaches at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, and specialises in maintaining the health of pigs through promoting excellence in stockmanship and production practises. So it's safe to say that we have two fairly eminent experts on the topic for our discussion this lunchtime, so I'm gonna hand over to Susanna, to present to you on African swine fever and the threat to UK pigs. Thank you very much, Ben, and greetings to everyone listening and thanks to the Pig Veterinary Society and Juve Farmer for sponsoring this webinar.

So my task today is to set the scene for John's talk by describing the key features of African swine fever virus and the global situation, and this will illustrate, I hope, the threat posed to UK pigs and why it's so important, we all keep high level of awareness and work with pig keepers to keep African swine fever out of this country. So, African swine fever is one of the two swine fevers, both of which are notifiable viral diseases of pigs. That means that suspicion must be reported to APHA when.

One suspects that disease might be present. They are two distinct and different viruses, but because they present in similar ways clinically and some of the pathology is similar, they are dealt with together when reported, and we don't attempt to distinguish during that investigation and duplicate samples are taken and tested. So the greater threat is very much from African swine fever, and that's why the focus is on that disease today.

This is a complex DNA virus and in fact only the only one in its family, and it's been somewhat neglected in past decades. We're lucky in having her bright as one of the few laboratories that has maintained a research ability. And they, although there's no effective vaccine at the moment, which is a big problem, they have reported some encouraging results recently.

Now due to its terrible effect on pig health and welfare and the fact that detection in a country is likely to stop international trade in both pigs and pork, African swine fever introduction into the UK pigs would have a really serious impact, particularly given the current, importance of the export trade to the economical viability of the UK pig industry. So our current status is, I'm glad to say, the fact that we have never detected ASF in sewages in the UK. We should remember, however, that the severe impact of both classical swine fever in 2000 in East Anglia and foot and mouth disease in 2001.

These are diseases which both entered through a pathway that African swine fever could in a contaminated meat in one manner or another. Swill feeding in the case of foot and mouth and a probable ham sandwich into an outdoor sow in classical swine fever. Now, like foot and mouth and classical swine fever, if ASF was found in this country, the government would implement a stamp out policy, and there's a swine fever contingency plan is published if you're interested to see how that would work.

So regarding the hosts for African swine fever, as, as the name suggests, it's a disease of pigs, unfortunately only pigs, and as the name suggests, again, it's historically a disease of African sewages. Now, the wild sewage species in Africa are resistant to disease but act as a significant reservoir of infection. They and their ticks, the soft ticks, which will often live in the burrows of, say, warthogs, and this has made elimination very difficult and limited pig production in parts of Africa.

So the domestic pig and also the Eurasian wild boar, however, are both equally susceptible to infection and disease. And the current African swine fever strain that's causing problems in the, in the world is causes high mortality in both of those. Another really important feature of the African swine fever virus is its ability to survive really long term in protein-rich environments and especially at low temperatures.

Unfortunately, drying, smoking, salting, spicing, whatever you like to, meat does not kill the virus. And this is transportation of infected products is a really major means, as I'll illustrate later, of of spread. And this survival is also important in pigs and wild boar which die of African swine fever.

They have high virus cheetahs at the point of death, and as their carcass decays, particularly wild boar out in out in forests and so on, that carcass remains infectious for weeks and also as a source of environmental contamination and a means of long-term persistence and spread. So here is a map which illustrates the current situation in Europe, and these are just 2020 cases. Now, apologies to any Sardinian colleagues, but I'd like you to ignore Sardinia during the talk because this strain they have preexists the current situation and is a different strain, so constant try not to get distracted by that.

So on this map, purple dots are wild boar cases, red ones are domestic pigs. And you can see this infection in Eastern Europe, particularly solid in wild boar, and we also have fofosite further west in Poland and in the wild boar in Belgium. Now it's important to note that in European member states, the surveillance is funded and there's a high compliance with reporting Africans find fever.

And it's true to say that there's there, there is variation in the effectiveness of surveillance and reporting in some other countries, and that will affect apparent country status in maps. I'll just point out that there is no magic fence along the border here between Poland and the Baltic states, between them and Belarus, so I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about possible status of, of Belarus. So how did African swine fever arrive in Europe?

It is a it's a fascinating if concerning story, and it is worth reading up on. But in, in brief, cargo ships waste from Africa is believed to have been the source of infection into a port called Poti in Georgia. Now whether that waste came was accessed by pigs on municipal waste sites or by people illegally taking ship waste off and feeding it to their pigs is not known.

But either way, infections thought to have gone in in April 2007 into the pigs in Georgia. At that point, about 80% of pigs are free range in the country, and there was a rapid spread by direct transmission and also swill feeding in the in the pigs and the wild boar within Georgia and to the countries beyond in the Caucasus and into South Russia. Now this was influenced, this spread was influenced by the fact that, as I've said, swill feeding was allowed, but also things like variable and slow compensation leading to under or late reporting.

And also relatively difficult, veterinary infrastructure and perhaps not getting on top of the disease as fast as, as would be, would be preferred and uncontrolled, therefore, uncontrolled disease allowed to, persist and to contribute to spread. Contact between pigs, which are free range or backyard and wild boar is also a big feature and they have significant wild boar populations. So as you see over the years 2010 and then into 2012, we see this spread right up into far flung parts of western, western and southern Russia.

Now this isn't because of spread within wild boar. Clearly humans are involved in this, in the, in this, these geographic leaps and particularly, the factors played by reductions. Meat prices in areas affected by African swine fever, making that attractive to buy and then take elsewhere, although that is it would have been illegal and and trade supplies being affected.

Also movement with travellers along trades, train routes and major roads contributed to that. And once infections set up in a, in an area, this is an area which is high pig and wild boar density, it tended to persist there. And what By 2014, following spreading across Russia and into Ukraine and Belarus, African swine fever was first detected in the EU.

Well, the EU was pre-warned. That infection would come into could come into the eastern parts of the country and had set up surveillance. Now this surveillance is based on found dead wild boar being tested because this virus strain does kill wild boar.

It's much more sensitive to find and test found dead wild boar rather than those shot, and you can see the figures in from Latvia and the Czech Republic here, how much more effective it is to look at those. And obviously finding more than one dead wild bore is also a really important signal about African swine fever potentially being present. One theory originally proposed was that when, because this African swine fever strain kills wild boar that it may die out and fail to propagate propagate, and this is really proven not to be the case in part because of long survival in the carcasses, but also the success of wild boar in populating these large areas of Eurasia.

The populations are virtually contiguous in many areas, and this is really enabled the virus to persist long term. Again, this is the success of the wild boar populations is another fascinating story worth, you know, really worth reading up on, and I'll put links later. And it's down to an interplay of different factors which have allowed, essentially allowed better food supplies, better reproduction, shelter for, for wild boar, and in some areas, people have been influencing things by encouraging, populations for hunting and introduction in certain areas which were previously free like Sweden.

They can exploit both a large range of food, types of food, but also habitats are very adaptable and the urban wild boy in parts of Germany is the same story as the urban fox in in London. I've got a timeline map here just before we set that off, just to show that the key shows you that green colours or pale green are wild bored pink for domestic pigs, and the bright colours means they're most recent in the, in the month that's being shown down in this corner here. So if I set that off.

In 2015, 2016, you'll see a steady expansion in eastern EU Baltic states and eastern Poland with the occasional spillover, and those red blobs into domestic pigs and they get culled out. I can see it's building up there. And it'll come down further into Poland as well there.

Have a look over here already in early 2017, we start seeing reports in domestic pigs in Ukraine. And look out here in June 2017, there's a leap to wild boar found dead. And then in November 2017, a westward spread in Poland.

Then from June 2018, you'll start seeing domestic pig outbreaks in Romania and Moldova, perhaps not surprisingly, and by September 2018, you'll see Belgian cases in a near the French border in wild boar. If you look out here, In western Poland, in November 2019, this is a significant geographic leap to near the German border. Then in February we see spread to Greece and.

Is the end of the mat. May. By May we have domestic pig outbreaks related to.

The wild boar spread in western Poland, and we've just heard today of a backyard pig affected in this area as well. So You can tell that, not only in, in the Caucasus and spread from there, but also in EU Humans have played a major role in spread. It's believed that wild boar spread is relatively slow and if left in the wild boar alone.

Without any human intervention, then a spread of approximately 8 to 17 kilometres a year might be expected. So these large geographical leaps over to over to Belgium, Poland, Hungary, places like that are due to human actions. It is difficult to control movement with, with individuals where borders are open and internally, but it's also relevant that farm biosecurity is variable and approximately 50% of farms in Romania are backyard.

And that is, typically lower biosecurity. They have typically lower biosecurity and that's relevant to their contact with both each other and to wild boar. So what can be done?

Well, I don't have time to go into the control in detail, but this gives you a flavour, and you can always come back to this and look in more detail. But in essence, in affected countries they are attempting to reduce the population of wild boar, remove wild boar as a source of infection, prevent spillover into pigs, and to reduce movements of wild wild boar, which is quite problematic. Great Britain does not have the population seen in many European countries.

For example, Germany shoots hundreds of thousands of wild boar annually, and the population of wild boar there is still increasing, and this shows data collected from several sources on sightings from 2015 and shows several foci. But it does illustrate the need to prevent those forci from joining up so that we don't have any contiguous populations. And also, if you have people who are keeping pigs in areas where there's any wild boar populations to have proper fencing, and we also want to make absolutely sure, and here's a forest of Dean poster to that end, to keep wild boar free of African swine fever themselves.

Control as well in, in domestic pigs again is a big subject, and I can't go into this in detail, but this lists the elements required for a stamp out policy and being applied in EU affected countries. I think an important thing is that one of the important things, African swine fever is a disease. Biosecurity can prevent introduction into domestic pigs, and the biosecurity is a powerful tool.

It's not a disease like foot and mouth disease, which is, which is spread by aerosols and and and so this is really useful tool to implement and I know John will address that. So this next picture is, is this other focus of infection we have in the world is in Southeast Asia. And here How did it get there?

Well, early on, authors, experts warned of the risk to China from global travellers and transport, and this was eastward spread from Russia. Which came to 1000 kilometres from the northeastern China border. So perhaps not surprising that in August, early August 2018 in domestic pigs up here was the first case found in China, and very rapidly over the next year there was really major spread across China and to China's neighbours and then again.

Across the country, across the region, and more recently to Papua New Guinea in Oceania and northeast India, and there is concern. You can see that most of these are domestic pig outbreaks. It's highly likely wild boar are involved in this as well, although not being reported, and soft ticks getting infected could start playing a role in the epidemiology.

So I think, I hope the situations illustrated here in Europe and Southeast Asia illustrate that the increased threat of African swine fever and the weight of material that could, that's out there in affected countries which could enter through various means into the UK and illustrates the role that we as people play in having spread this disease in different parts of the world. So that brings me to the risk of introduction of this disease into the UK and the main risk is infected products coming in through illegal trade. We don't, we don't have legal trade with restricted areas.

So whether, if this came in through containers or through personal baggage with travellers, this, this is considered our, our major risk. There are other risks clearly from contaminated fomites. Of various sorts, but they are secondary to this principal, principal risk.

So information campaigns and border checks are ongoing. We have targeted messages produced by both industry and government. This one to hauliers, this one to the public and here to farm staff from AHDB and they're available on, on the AHDB website.

So, this, there was a a quantitative risk assessment by the government showed that it's highly likely that infected products are coming into the country. And this does not mean, however, that African swine fever is necessarily going to infect pigs, and this is where you as vets and pig keepers play an absolute pivotal role, and that's regardless of the number of pigs kept on any premises and can, can prevent that, that step from entering the country and entering pigs from ever happening. It is not inevitable.

So firstly, the absolute clear one is to remind owners it's illegal to feed pigs any waste food or or meat or meat products. That's, that's clear. Also, any accident, preventing any accidental access.

It's a very simple thing to, to, provide dedicated clothing and boots for visitors and people attending and, and tending the pigs, and that's something which can be done by anybody. It's very cheap to do and there's a good, absolutely should be put in place. Also exclude other potential means of, infected material entering the pig premises.

That will depend very much on the premises, what those risks are. Explaining to the owners and staff why they have to do certain things really helps people comply with, with the requirements. And using the signs that are provided through HDB posters from the government, providing those to your clients, again, if they're not already aware of them.

And you, as vets, will often be able to identify weaknesses that haven't been seen by the, the pig owners themselves and provide advice. And I'm sure John will say a bit more about that. Now, John will tell you all about what African swine fever looks like, and this is just an early request, to be, you know, familiar with that and encourage your clients to discuss pig health concerns with you and, and know what to do if you do suspect, suspect disease.

And, in this box, it tells you exactly, exactly what you, you should do. So having, having that information, knowing where to access that should you need it. Let's hope you never do, but it's good to have it, have it there.

The a talk on differential diagnosis of swine fever is is a talk in itself. So, this is just to touch on where you might seek information. And one of when we hear from vets or pig keepers suspicion of swine fever, it usually arises because of unexplained deaths, acute unexplained deaths, or severe clinical signs, and sometimes that's combined with hemorrhagic lesions, suspicious of swine fever.

What's really helpful at the outset is where where you're investigating disease is to have rectal temperatures taken. It is called African swine fever for a reason. And knowing that and using rectal temperatures, often these pigs will be, they'll be sick enough for you to to take that temperature.

Obviously, a completely healthy pig, without good, good restraint is, is maybe difficult, but when they're sick, you should be able to do that. We have, occasional report cases, and they are testing, they have obviously tested negative, and we actually did an article recently in the vet record describing some of those, which you, you may find interesting and illustrates some of the things which prompted those report cases. If you are investigating disease in pigs and, and want to discuss cases, there is, VIOs and vets in, in the diagnostic service through, APHA and SRUC in England, Scotland and Wales.

So, you can access those information on how to contact them is on that link there. So if that's stimulated, I hope it has stimulated interest, here's some more links to more information to read at your leisure. And, there's some of them are really very interesting, very comprehensive reviews.

There's an awful lot of work going on and funding going into control of African swine fever and, and so on. So please, I hope you do find time to, to look at that in more detail. And of course, to do this webinar, I'm very reliant on the input of many other people within DEFRA and and APHA and elsewhere in Purbright and wider and, and of course thank you also to the sponsors of this webinar.

Thanks very much. My name is Doctor John Carr, and I will take over from this presentation, and we'll talk now about the clinical, more on the clinical signs of African swine fever. And as Susannah has pointed out, the diagnosis is swine fever.

We are not allowed as clinicians to differentiate between African and classical swine fever. That is something for the government to do. So the question is, what are we going to do, if we have a suspected case?

Now, the videos and pictures I'm going to show you are actually from cases of African swine fever. But as I said, we're really talking about swine fevers as a whole. Now, my experience, fortunately, I have worked in Africa, which is a fantastic continent to work in.

The downside is that that's where I first met my first cases of African swine fever. This is a small farm in a village or town actually, called Gulu in the north of Uganda. And myself and David, looked after these, 6 pigs, 6 pigs, for this, for these people.

And, we actually had African swine fever come through the town 6 times, and in all occasions, we managed to keep up. Pigs free. And as Susanna has said, African swine fever actually doesn't spread very far.

It's primarily pig to pig contact, but human beings will spread it. So we've put in some, fairly basic biosecurity programmes, and we managed to keep our pigs alive. Now, it has been said jokingly, that there are maybe two ways of being a famous vet.

One is to diagnose foot and mouth, and the other one is to not diagnose foot and mouth. And I mean maybe argue now we have a third. The same can be said for African swine fever.

Obviously, we don't want to be the vet who misses it, and probably most of us don't want to be the vet who sees it either. But the key is we're not alone. Now, this particular case of foot and mouth disease in Vietnam, the client, quite helpfully painted all of the lesion in green, which made it even for me as a clinician, fairly easy to recognise that there must be something wrong.

Actually, he missed the one on the nose, but there was something wrong with all the feet, including the feet of the piglets. So, You need to talk to the clients. The clients are obviously going to be extremely concerned about their pig that's extremely sick.

But we have our colleagues within practise, and we have our colleagues within the government. For my, for my own sins as such, I have, raised the alarm on foot and mouth once. This was before the foot and mouth outbreak in 2001.

And I have called classical swine fever twice. Unfortunately, my three, suspicions were all incorrect. But nobody ever told me off, for raising the alarm.

It was all, it was always taken very seriously. And working as a team, we demonstrated that, I was incorrect, and it was other issues such as BVD, the other one was a thrombocytopenia, and, the other, classical swine fever was due to warfarin poisoning. So, we talk specifically about African swine fever, but as I say, we're looking at swine fevers.

Unfortunately, the major clinical sign is death, death and more death. And the pigs that we are most likely to see in the UK are going to be a dead pig, or at least a pig that is on the, on the edge of dying, . African swine fever kills.

It kills all age groups. This is, this is one of the things that will be different to most other diseases. Now, I appreciate if you've only got one pig, you've only got one pig to die.

But on a farm basis, African swine fever is no respective age. It will kill piglets, nursery pigs, growers, finishers, mom and dad. The big problem, from a control point of view is that African swine fever actually will not kill all the pigs.

The death rates of, this African swine fever type 2 virus that we have in the northern hemisphere and now moving into the southern hemisphere is about 30 to 70%. So around 30 to 70% of pigs also live. The problem with them living through African swine fever is they also become persistent, or at least they can become persistent for life.

And for those of you who are interested in geography, this is a case in Russia, and this is a finishing herd, and you walk into the farm, and this is what I saw, a vast number of pigs that were dead, difficult for me to miss. And this was in Korea, with one of the, early Korean farms. And Korea is a very interesting, country, .

If, God forbid, we did ever get African swine fever, we must mimic, what the Koreans have done. The Koreans have done a fantastic job at controlling African swine fever in the commercial farms. So you have death, unfortunately.

The things I want you to, really note are the extremely red ears, a red nose, and red hindquarters of these pigs. Now, my first diagnosis of these pigs might have been, a bacterial disease called Aton Bacillus pluriumonia. This one could look a little bit like meningitis.

So there are, as Susanna said, some differentials, and we'll talk a little bit more about that. But it is very unusual to get APP in finishing pigs and in late wieners. The pigs have a fever, African swine fever.

They have a fever. These fevers are about 42 degrees. Now there are other diseases that will also cause a fever such as Esyphilis.

However, this is, this is a very feverish animal. This this sow here in Vietnam is breathing very heavily. She is has real trouble rising.

You can see her red, hind quarters. Now using an infrared camera, these are these, these are the same pig. We see that, the infrared cameras recording a temperature of 40.2 °C.

This is, this is the highest I've ever had, or in African swine fever cases, are the highest I've ever had on my infrared camera. Normally, the infrared will read around 32 to 36 degrees. Now, the problem with infrared camera, as we are, which we also use for COVID-19 and spine influenza or influenzas, the problem with infrared camera is that it reads the surface temperature.

And so I've had to be careful that if the pig is very hot, one of the things it does is it goes and cools off by sitting in some water, or maybe some urine or some faeces. And then, its body temperature, according to my camera, will be about 24, 26 degrees. So I've learned to have to be very cautious about pigs that are very hot, but also pigs that are abnormally cold for their behaviour.

Now, one of the things we can do with an infrared camera, this, but this again is more from a surveillance point of view, is that you can set the infrared camera to a temperature of 38 degrees, and then all the pigs that are hotter than 38 degrees will light up. And then, when you're examining the, the group of pigs, I would then take a rectal temperature of all of these pigs. Now, one of the things that I would encourage you to do is to have all your clients to buy their own rectal thermometer.

So that when you go to the farm, you are not using your thermometer, which then goes back into your car. And likewise, with needles and syringes and things that contact the pigs, either leave them on the farm or dispose of them. Do not attempt to boil wash anything that you're using at the moment, when you, when you're treating, pigs in the field.

Saying that African swine fever has not been blamed, for, by, by, by the, for the veterinarian. However, on the other hand, classical swine fever has been associated with the veterinarians spreading the disease. Because of the very high temperature, if you have pregnant animals, then the pregnant animals will abort.

And It is all of them, and it is any stage of pregnancy, unlike some other diseases of the sows with reproductive tract. So you'll have pigs of of 20 days, you'll have pigs of 80 days, you'll have pigs of 100 days aborting their pigs. On one of the farms in the Ukraine, we had 100 sows that were pregnant, and out of that 100 sows, 80 of them aborted.

So this is a very dramatic, abortion, much more dramatic than I've seen in any other, condition, including things like swine influenza, which also creates a very high temperature. But in that case, you might get 10. You're not gonna get in the order of 70%.

The sows, I'll put both of these pictures on. The, these pigs are unfortunately from the Ukraine a few years ago, and African swine fever is extremely infectious, so any pig coming in contact with the virus is highly likely to get sick, and then 70% of them will die. But it is not very contagious.

The disease does not really transmit much over 3 metres, unless it is taken. But all of these pigs in this pen, will has contact with this pig, and will then die, or 70% of them will die. And you can see that with these pigs, these pigs are unable to walk.

They have, red ears, maybe not as red as the, some of the previous pictures, but they have red ears and a red backside. Now, again, we knew that African swine fever was in the Ukraine, and so therefore our alarms were already raised, and that obviously makes it much, much easier when you are diagnosing a condition. But these pigs, had heavy breathing.

They had temperatures of 42, and I think this one was actually 43. So they're very hot when you touch the pigs, they were very hot. The pigs' joints are very painful, like a really bad flu.

No doubt they have, headaches and, are in, in quite a lot of pain. And the only treatment, unfortunately was we, we put them to sleep. The pigs can appear to be cold despite having a very high temperature, and here we have pigs in the Philippines with African swine fever.

And these pigs were starting to be sick. Yesterday with 3 or 4 of them, and now you can see that it has moved through a great number of, of the pigs in the pen. The pigs may also be presented with other signs.

These pigs also have a respiratory disease, and so you can have the, respiratory disease on top. But there was a, a marked difference in the couple of days in a couple of days' behaviour. Now, a lot of these signs you're saying, well, they're very common, John, and I hear that.

. But it's the severity and the numbers that we're talking about. Again, I appreciate it's difficult when you've got 1 pig, 5 pigs. But another clinical sign to watch for is, vomiting, constipation, and the constipation turns to diarrhoea, and often with, with blood in it, so it becomes dysentery.

See, these pigs that are huddled, that one's starting to have dysentery, blood in its faeces. When you take the record temperature, the temperatures of these pigs are over 40 degrees, 41, 42 degrees. This sow here has vomited, other sows in the, in the pen, are, are very quiet, very, not wanting to move very much.

And when you look at them in detail, again, there's something seriously wrong with these animals. Sometimes the disease can be very dramatic. Here we see an unfortunate sow, in, the Philippines, in the, and what you have here is, a sow that is haemorrhaging from every orifice.

She's haemorrhaging from the nose, from the eyes, from the ears, from her vagina, from her from her, anus. This, this sow is in extreme distress, . This disease wipes out the, the blood clotting factors, and so the animals have a thrombocytopenia.

This is extremely distressing to see. Now what you have to remember as well when you're on the farm, is that if you have any suspicions of African swine fever or classical swine fever, you're probably 7 days behind anyway. The incubation period of this disease is 3 to 3 to 53 to 15 days.

But around about a week is fairly normal. And the pigs will be, sick and getting very sick, and they die in about 2 days. And this is one of the problems, with, the pigs recovering.

The pig doesn't have enough time to mount an immune response to African swine fever and so dies. You get an immune response to African swine fever, but it takes at least 10 days. And if you're dead on day 8, then your body has just let you down.

How will it spread around your small holdings? If you've only got one pig, then clearly you're gonna have just one pig, very sick or dead. If you've got a few pigs, In most of the small holdings that we are going to be dealing with, it is highly likely that all the pigs will start becoming sick, virtually all at the same time.

Majority of small holdings, hobby farmers are not going to have anywhere near the biosecurity required in order to stop this highly infectious disease. The pigs through, through. Cat will move the virus between all the pigs on the property.

Now, if you're talking about a farm and a relatively large farm with batching programmes in place, it can take 6 weeks or so for the disease to move around the farm. So it can actually be relatively slow between buildings, but it is always very fast within a building. It will take just a couple of days to wipe out all of the pigs when we start showing clinical signs.

I just put this in because he's a cute pig. He's one of the pigs that I look after in the states. He, he obviously is negative to African swine fever, and he's telling me that he just lives on his own.

But having one pig or a number of pigs, it doesn't matter. This disease is not, it just is all pigs are susceptible. So if we have a postmortem finding, if we do have one pig that, your clients might ask you to examine the pig, and maybe the pig is dead, and there's nothing on the skin that makes you suspicious, And so you start doing the postmortem.

And the words in white I'm not going to say at this point, but I just want you to think of them as a series of steps. If I have a pig with that has suddenly died, with some history maybe of being a coordinator the day before and presents with very, red ears. I wouldn't do a postmortem.

I would be calling the government veterinarians and telling them, I think we have a problem, and we then need to investigate this. Now, clearly, this depends also on the breed. If you've got a large black, it could be very difficult to see red ears because the ears are already black.

I opened the pig up. And the spleen is enormous. Now, there are diseases that will cause the spleen to be enormous, but at this point, stop and you must call.

I wouldn't do any more of of your postmortem. As a point of interest, if you want to know the length of a normal pig's spleen, if you put the spleen against the pig's leg, the front leg between the toe and the elbow, the spleen will be the, will be the same length as the distance between the toe and the elbow. This spleen here is obviously enormous, and this is from a case of African swine fever in Korea.

There are other conditions. But I don't think anybody, anybody is going to complain about you saying, I need you to visit my, my client's farm because we've got a spleen, that's almost as big as me. One of the things that has been extremely dramatic has been the gallbladder.

Now, Susanna could correct me in the questions, but in the swine fever cases and certainly the African swine fever cases, I've seen, the hemorrhagic and a demass gallbladder, I can't think of any other real disease where you've seen multiple takes with this, hemorrhagic gallbladder. It is very dramatic. And then the lymph nodes can be extremely large and extremely hemorrhagic as well.

This is the hepatic hepatic gastric lymph node. It is normally about the size of your thumb, in this sort of aged pig, and this, this, lymph node was the size of my fist. This one was actually in, Vietnam.

And again, you see that, and it's, your alarm bells start ringing. Now if you read the textbook, the textbook talks a lot about turkey and kidneys, and I didn't know what a turkey had even looked like, except for the fact that I knew it looked like something like a swine fever. .

Kidney until I went to the States and I saw turkeys and right enough, the turkey egg looks very much like a pig with swine fever. Now this is what the textbook says it should look like. Fantastic.

Yes, I could recognise that. Unfortunately, this is what I see in the field. It's not quite as dramatic, but there are still haemorrhages.

And these haemorrhages are, you can see there's 3 there, 1 there. These haemorrhages are not normal in a wiener finisher sack. These haemorrhages are not normal.

If you have any concerns, you must phone the government. African swine fever is extremely infectious. All body secretions are are are full of virus, very high levels of virus.

And so if you do have any suspicion, one of the things you can do is to put a bag on the head and the backside of the pig in order to stop any more leakage of of materials, and then, wash your hands and your client's hands as well, and then wait. And wait for the government's vets to tell us what to do next. As Susannah says, there are differentials, .

And these are always the, the thing that causes us problems. As I said, I have phoned 3 times in my career for a suspicion of notifiable diseases. 1 ft and mouth disease that was BVD, and I said to the chief veterinary officer who actually appeared on my farm that I knew it was BVD, and I was severely told off, for making an assumption.

He said, and he was quite right. The assumption was foot and mouth. I had blisters on the feet, I had blisters on the tongue, and I had blisters on the udder.

And he said, and you thought it was DVD? He said, it's a good job you've called it in. I've never had anybody complain to me about calling in something that I was not happy with.

For those of you who are semi-interested in pigs, Glaserella parasuus is a new name for Hiemophilus parasuus, which is glacius disease. So I am worried. I have a pig that is dead.

I have a pig that is extremely uncoordinated. I don't think it's meningitis, it has a very high temperature, it has red ears. Call in.

You need the GPS of your location, which is present on your phone. Take pictures and maybe some video and send that both to your partners or your colleagues in, in, in practise, and to the government veterinarians. Close the farm, close the holding.

People are not allowed on, people are not allowed off. Nobody. The kids don't go to school.

One of the cases I had in, in, in 2001 with a foot and mouth outbreak, we had the priest, the vicar had come to the farm, and he had to sit there and wait until the government vets turned up. Put the pig in a bag so that we do not contaminate the environment more than we have to and wait. Can't leave the farm until the government veterinarians tell you.

As Susanna has pointed out as well, one of the things that is very worrying about African swine fever, this virus does not die with the pig. This virus lives with the with the dead pig. These, these, this is case number 2 in Poland, and this bone here was still positive to African swine fever and could still and did still kill other pigs.

We can do something on our small holdings. We can keep our wild pigs off the farm as much as we can. And one of the main reasons why pigs will visit another pig farm is because they're hungry or they want a cheap meal.

And so having spilled food really has to be outlawed. We've got to make sure our clients are cleaner and don't have spilled food. This will improve the health of their pigs anyway, and reduce the risk of birds and rodents onto the farm.

Almost everywhere in the world, one of the major reasons why the disease has spread, has been through pigs eating contaminated pork products, or as Susanna said, an accidental. Contamination eating contaminated pork products. We must, where we can advise and cajole and talk to our clients that they must not feed kitchen waste.

They must not feed swell, and here, you know, give them the instructions of what swill is . This is swell that we fed to our African pigs. Our pigs survived because we cooked it, but it has to be very hot for very long.

What we have found as well, particularly in Africa, but in Asia as well, is that flies can carry, the ASF virus, particularly on their feet, and flies and vets' cars seem to attract to each other. So you park the car at the edge of the farm, you walk around the farm, and you come back and you forgot to close the window or whatever, and the car's full of flies. You must make sure when you drive off the property to make sure that you blow out all of those flights.

You do not want to be taking flights from one property to the next. As we've all learned with COVID-19 about washing our hands, we must wash our hands. African swine fever is an enveloped virus.

It's the DNA virus with COVID-19 is an RNA virus, but the soap and water will still kill it as effectively as some of the more expensive and potent disinfectants. But you must make sure that your hands are clean, and this again is a teaching opportunity for our clients. I use a UV soap, so I get my clients to, put some UV soap on their hands, and then they have to go away and wash their hands.

And then using a black light, I can show the client where the UV soap has not been washed off, particularly on the inside of the thumb. I'm a Viking, so I have big knuckles, and on your, nail beds. And if you have rings or a bandage, if they're extremely difficult to clean.

Note my, this is actually my hands. Note my, jumper there, which I've in which I've infected, which I've contaminated with the UV soap, and then failed to wash off. Pigs are everywhere.

They are very clever creatures. They are very, very common, particularly since we, we reintroduced them back into the UK. Oh well, not to worry.

This is actually in Poland, and these pigs have, been herded around by the combine harvester until the very end, and then out they charge, Mom, dad, babies, a whole lot of them, and then straight into the forest. You just wouldn't know. There are millions of pigs.

On this planet, there's probably a billion pigs in a world of 7 billion people. They are extremely clever, very, very successful creatures. Unfortunately, we have a major problem with a very major pathogen that's killing them.

Our border controls have got to be, enhanced. I still find that the border controls coming into the UK, were certainly before Christmas inadequate. Australia, can teach us a lesson.

Australia does, have very good border controls, and we've obviously, or most of us will have probably watched the television and saw border patrol. They are extremely good at, trying to catch, people. Ignorantly bringing products in, but they also know they're not, they're not 100% affected by any stretch of the imagination.

Here are a couple of guys in Korea. The Koreans were good enough to allow me to go behind the scenes at the airport and take a couple of pictures, for this presentation. So, We have a pig with red ears, a high temperature, and a postmortem and enlarged spleen.

You must call it in. Do not leave the farm. If we can recognise the first case, we have a very good chance of eliminating it from the UK.

If we recognise case 100, we may be in for a big, bad time. So with that, I would like to pass the presentation back over for some questions. That's great, thanks both of you.

I think certainly as someone who, it's been probably the thick end of a decade since I've been involved in any sort of pig work, er, it's always fascinating to see how, We as a profession have moved forwards and whether challenges are on new or the same as previously, so if anybody does have any questions, if you would like to pop them into the Q&A box, we'll address as many of them as possible. And we've already had a couple popped in there, and I just wondered if I could start with, with one that I, I find quite interesting from Jake, saying that biosecurity to control ASF will be a real challenge in outdoor production. And I'm wondering if you guys have got any comments on that particular avenue of control.

I can answer some of that. Hi, Jake. I could probably say to Jake, he could answer the question himself.

He'll know more about this than, probably Susannah and myself. It is a frightening, experience, with our 40% of our herds being outdoors. However, On the other, on the other hand, it does not spread very quickly, and we have had classical swine fever outdoors and we have eliminated it.

But Jake is quite right. It is a, it is a particular concern. And do I have anything to stop it?

Not really, we just do the best we can. Yeah, Zanna, have you got? I, I think just to add to that, the, there's, there's lots to be done in advance as well if you, if you've got rodent populations controlled as well as they can be.

If you've got, your dead stock being collected from the perimeter and already in advance, and as a, as a business as usual, and have good. Good measures in place to restrict the amount of times that either people or vehicles are having to enter. And if they do have to enter taking precautions, then you're, you're ahead of the game already in the event of any notifiable disease or any disease, even if it's one which isn't notifiable, which is a new disease to the unit of, of being able to control spread from that unit.

So, I mean, but Jake is, is completely, very conversant with, with the outdoor units. So we'll know what we're getting at. Thanks guys, and Susanna, I just wondered if I could just pick your brains, and I know the the sort of, a lot of the maps that you put on earlier, sort of, you know, we're aware that er the Germans are famed for their efficiency, .

And on and on several of the maps it was very, very clear that despite the fact that Germany was sort of, you know, surrounded by multiple sort of mini and larger outbreaks, there didn't seem to be anything within their borders, and I just wondered if you had any insight for people as to, you know, is that down to, to anything they've specifically done. Well, you're, I mean, you're right that they're being very proactive and they, even more so since the westward spread in Poland and certainly controlling their wild boar population in the along that border and within Germany. Surveillance to make sure that, any that are founded aren't positive.

And also, although it's incomplete fencing, they have, they have tried to use fencing where that's possible, but obviously in some of those areas we're talking about, it's, it's not just not possible to put a sensible or complete fence in. So that is limited in what they can do. I think.

It isn't surrounded. I mean, there's the westward spread is the most worrying for Germany because the wild boar that have been found in Poland infected within a few kilometres of the border. So, I think they remain on high alert and very concerned, and I hope over the next year, in the year's time, we can, we can be saying the same thing that, yes, being proactive has has helped prevent it, but I think it's a very worrying situation.

I think as well. Poland is doing a lot. They obviously grappling with a current outbreak, but they are doing what they can to control and control population of wild boar and remove carcasses themselves.

So it's things are happening on both sides of the border. Mm. Yeah, and really interesting, so as you know, when we touch on borders and we touch on movement around those borders, obviously COVID-19 has has placed us in a circumstance where there are quite extensive national and global travel restrictions, and obviously Kate Richards has just er popped in the question there of, you know, is this an opportunity for us to really sort of limit the spread of ASF?

I, I think it's highly likely that there has been a, a, a beneficial effect in that sense if you can, you know, the one of the very few, good things to have come out, but it's, I would hope it's only going to be temporary that we, we have those restrictions in place, so, . Enhancing border controls has to be part of the ongoing control part that, we play in reducing the risk to, to the UK and there's certainly room for improvement. Can I answer that a little bit?

While it has relatively little impact on the UK because we're free, and we just need to stay free, and it's at our border. The question about COVID-19 is playing a role in Asia. So, in the Philippines, for instance, it is making it easier to limit the spread of African swine fever, around, the Philippines because there's a limited amount of movement.

And I know the same would be true for, China as well. Yeah, and, and obviously lots of questions and sort of, little touch points from people in the Q&A about sort of vaccine insights, sort of, you know, is, is this something that we think is, is a viable, management option, you know, is it something that may fit into an achievable timeline successfully? Interestingly, I think the experts on the vaccines would say that there may be vaccines which are imperfect, so by that I mean that they're not ones which have a, have a marker.

They may not prevent excretion of virus, but they may damp down. They they may be available and appropriate for use in affected countries, where they're not getting on top of the disease to damp it down. Sooner than vaccines which might be appropriate for countries which are wanting to implement a stamp out policy.

So, for example, China has, has, various developments in progress with vaccines, but they may be vaccines which we wouldn't be implementing here. And as I said, Bright has recently published a paper. On a vaccine that they've developed, which has shown promise in experimental infections in pigs in, in preventing, infection and really very, looking very good, but has to go through the usual processes of a vaccine.

So I doubt that that would be ready within. Certainly within the year, and I wouldn't like to say, I don't know how long away it would be, but certainly not immediately. But there are, the amount of effort that's going into it now, now that it's causing so much more problems around the world, funding has gone in and it has things have advanced greatly compared to where it was just a few years ago.

So I think it does show promise, but not in the immediate future. Right, OK. And we have been looking for 40, we have been looking for 40 years.

But not, not a lot of people have been looking, not many institutes. But, but I agree that the, the, the promise about African swine fever vaccine, or at least I think the mistake we've been making historically, is we've been trying to get a vaccine for African swine fever. There are 24 different types, and the immunity between the types is very poor.

It's a bit like foot and mouth. So, Having a vaccine against one type, is a lot more, probable. And what we do know, from the pigs that have recovered is they don't get sick again, they are immune.

It's just getting them. Making them live long enough to mount immune response. Yeah, and we don't have a vaccine.

Yeah, interesting when you talk about sort of how long we can, we can make them live in order to sort of support or recovery. It was a really interesting question from Sarah Cook here. Sarah starts with just a student here and I think Sarah and I would emphasise that, I think as Evidenced by the questions that we've had thus far and all of those in the chat box, everybody as students, as vets and, and, and nurses and veterinary professionals throughout the whole of our career.

So it's great that you, you have the confidence to ask the questions. How long after treating with antipyretics do you start to get worried about a response or a lack of response to the treatment? In my experience, I, I have used, aspirin and ibufenol and paracetamol.

The pigs did come down in temperature, but they still died. I mean, the pyrexia is one thing, but the thrombocytopenia is something else. I mean, the pigs start haemorrhaging to death.

So. Yes, I, I used, I used aspirin, in my farms in Vietnam where we don't have to kill the farm. We, we are allowed to try and see if we can save the farm.

. But The antipyretics, I use aspirin really as a welfare option, to be honest. If, as in if they're going to die, I don't want them to die in agony. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think that's it, it's that call to, to sort of, you know, maintaining welfare standards as well that are obviously paramount in the management of every case. I mean it's one of the few diseases where I've actually, you know, you, you kneel on the ground crying because it's just, it is, you are, you feel so helpless and you know that you're looking at somebody's livelihood, and you know that there's very little little you can do, it is extremely distressing disease. Yeah.

I think the emphasis would be on if you, if you suspect it's to get it reported and. Yeah. Take things from there.

Certainly lack of response to antimicrobials, if, if, if initially, it was suspected that it was a bacterial infection, and then there was a complete lack of response to that, it would be another hallmark of reasons to be concerned. Would you agree, John? Yes, absolutely.

There's been a couple of cases where, my clients have videoed me. Do you think we have a problem? I remember once in, once in the Ukraine, we had 10 pigs die, out of something like 5000.

So, you know, the odd pig dying was the problem, but 10 was a little more than we had expected, and 6 of them were in the same pen. But it looked like Eysipus, and they only just one age group in this particular pet house. So, I did give them, we treated all the pigs with penicillin that were sick.

The next day we lost 5. So you start thinking, oh, maybe we're, maybe we're getting there. I closed the farm because we're in an area where we had African swine fever.

The day after that, we lost 36, and the day after that, we lost 76, and after that I killed them all. . So you don't, you go with the history.

But on that first day, I wasn't sure. I mean, I, you know, all I had was a video and I just wasn't sure, but we had suspicions, so we closed the farm, nothing was going in and out. We did contact the government and the government agreed with my approach, and to say by day 3, he was pretty obvious what we were dealing with.

Yeah. Well, sadly we're out of time. I know there's obviously been a multitude of questions, and I know that people will be able to come to you with questions sort of in the aftermath of the, the talk.

Thank you both very much for your insights, and I think obviously what we don't want to do is finish on such a negative point. So I'd like to highlight as Simon Docherty did. In the Q&A, that video of all of the pigs flying out from, just in front of the combine harvester, I think was brilliant.

It's just sort of like, you know, shows that sort of real family, bond and intelligence that pigs do have. So that was, that was a nice, a nice element to have as part of the talks there. So thank you both very much for your time, really insightful and look forward to seeing everybody on another webinar soon.

Cheers guys, take care. Well, thank you. And thank you on behalf of Pigs.

We are very grateful for the opportunity.