US now on high alert over African Swine Fever after it jumped the Atlantic

It poses no threat to humans but can cause up to 100% mortality in pigs

Pigs stand in a pen at a farm near Le Mars, Iowa, in the US where farmers are now on high alert. Picture: Dan Brouillette/Bloomberg

American pig farmers have been put on alert against African Swine Fever (ASF) after the disease jumped across the Atlantic Ocean and cropped up in the Dominican Republic, a Caribbean country only 700 miles from the United States.

There has never been any finding of ASF in the United States or Canada, and it has been absent for nearly 40 years from the Western Hemisphere, until the Dominican Republic outbreak.