Since the detection of the first outbreak on July 28, 2021, the plague swine Africa (PPA) has represented a burden for the industry swine national: the disease led to the depopulation of more than 32,000 pigs that tested positive for the disease.
This led to Government Dominican to allocate 1,952,494,016 pesos between 2021 and 2024 to compensate more than 700 pig farmers that, lacking knowledge to make measures sanitary to prevent the diseasethey could not avoid the sacrifice of their sick pigs.
33.3% of this financing (650,799,957 pesos) was contributed by the department of Agriculture of the United States (USDA) and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (Aphis), two entities that formed an ASF Incident Command in the country to help local authorities mitigate the spread of the disease. diseasepreventing it from spreading outside the territory Dominican to the United States and other countries in the Western Hemisphere.
This command announced yesterday his exit of the country, reporting that, although the plague swine continues to be a risk for the producers locally and for the entire region, the actions undertaken to improve the biosecurity in the intervened farms and improve the country’s response capacity to the detection of the disease have allowed the plague It is no longer an emergency.
“While we congratulate the Dominican authorities for their tireless efforts to control and contain the diseasewe must recognize that the PPA continues to represent a risk significant,” said the representative of the United States embassy in the Dominican Republic, Jeromi Mick.
Measurements taken
The head of the PPA Incident Command in the Dominican Republic, Silvia Kreindel, explained that both the Government like him command worked together to fulfill the measures sanitary based on a regulation.
Likewise, six incinerators in the main airports of the country and canine units were established that have contributed to the confiscation of between 300 and 1,000 kilos of pork products per month.
Added to this is the strengthening of the detection capabilities of Laboratory Veterinarian Central (Lavecen), which can do up to 1,000 tests daily to detect ASF, as well as developing tests for a vaccine to prevent pigs from getting sick.
Reactivate production
During the closing ceremony of the USDA-Aphis ASF Incident Command, the Minister of AgricultureLimber Cruz, assured that the levels of production they are recovering at levels prior to the arrival of the plague swine to the country, when there were between 1,600,000 and 1,700,000 units of pork.
However, the amount of pig farmers It has never been the same.
Most of the production It is in the hands of the little ones producerswhich exceeded 22,000 pig farmersbut now there are over 16,000, the president of the Dominican Federation of Pig Farmers Incorporated (Fedocorp), Francisco Brito, told Diario Libre, who acknowledged that many of them began to produce chickens or goats.
“A large part of the producers Those who had had their pigs eliminated, even paid, have returned to production. The unfortunate thing about that is that they do not have the measures of biosecurity and that the disease will continue its hectic course,” he said.
With this, he referred to the producers backyard and families who carry out this activity informally, something for which the Government must develop a special plan to make them also comply with measures sanitary.
