Vigilance key to tackling threat from new diseases

For many farms the losses were significant from last year’s PRRS disease crisis, says Ciarán Carroll, Head of the Pig Development Department at Teagasc Moorepark.

One year on he is advising that vigilance now is the key to keep two new disease threats out of Ireland — African Swine Fever (ASF) and Porcine Epidemic Diarrhoea (PEDv). Neither disease has ever been recorded in Ireland.

ASF is one of the most important and serious diseases of domestic pigs.