Rome, (APP – UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News – 22nd Sep, 2024) Pig farmer Alberto Cavagnini has slaughtered 1,600 of his hogs due to swine fever, a virus threatening the 20-billion-euro pork industry in Italy, including its world-famous prosciutto.
The disease, which is fatal for pigs and disastrous for the economy, has particularly affected the northern regions of Lombardy, Piedmont and Liguria — and its spread is spooking neighbour France.
Italy recorded cases of the virus in just under 25,000 pigs in 50 farms, and in nearly 2,500 wild boars, between January 2022 and September this year, official figures show.
Cavagnini is lucky: the breeder from Brescia in northern Italy owns several farms, softening the blow from the cull, “but many breeders only have one farm”, so lose all their livestock, he told AFP.
In 2024 alone, between 50,000 and 60,000 pigs were slaughtered across Italy.
EU experts criticised Rome’s management of the crisis after a visit to the Mediterranean country in July.
“The overall disease control strategy in northern Italy needs to be improved. Each region carries out its own measures, with minimum coordination with its neighbours,” they said in a report.
Brussels recommended adopting a single strategy for the whole of northern Italy and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government appointed a special commissioner to lay down the rules.
The movement of pigs within infected and neighbouring areas is banned — except towards slaughterhouses — while access to farms is limited to the bare minimum.
“At the moment… we are building barriers” to create zones to limit the movement of wild boars, Francesco Feliziani from the National Reference Centre for Swine Fever (CEREP) told AFP.