Sir, – African swine fever, or ASF, is an easy to transmit and difficult to eradicate viral haemorrhagic disease that spreads rapidly through pig herds, usually killing an animal within 10 days. Quite literally, the pig “bleeds out”.
A recent outbreak in Lower Saxony in Germany, the country’s largest pig producing region, which had been free of ASF until now, has rung alarm bells in the pig industry across Europe, including here in Ireland.
It’s only a matter of time before we see a case of ASF on an Irish pig farm. China has been grappling with multiple outbreaks since the disease was first detected there in 2018. An estimated 200 million pigs were culled in 2019 as the disease spread rapidly across the country.
Apart from the risk of ASF arriving in Ireland, there remains, and will always remain, the ethical issue surrounding intensive piggeries. We fatten the pigs in five-to-six months with largely imported feed in order to produce meat that we don’t need.
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The winners are those who produce the cheapest meat, but the race to the bottom means that only the largest producers can stay the course. Which will rule out the majority of Irish pig producers.
The other big losers are the pigs themselves, who suffer enormously in these barren, automated, indoor housing systems.
Planetary health is a big loser, too, which is under serious threat from the way we farm animals and from the sheer volume of animals raised and killed across the globe each year.
We have to change the way we farm. We have to change the way we eat. – Yours, etc,
GERRY BOLAND,
Keadue,
Co Roscommon.