Protection of the pig sector
The Minister of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry, Francesco Lollobrigida, spoke at Question Time in the Chamber of Deputies, answering among others a question regarding initiatives for the protection of the Italian pig sector in relation to the spread of the African swine fever.
A real pandemic
This is the text of his speech: “This question further allows us to talk about African swine fever, a real pandemic which evidently does not only concern Italy, it concerns a large part of our continent and a large part of the Asian continent, to which you were referring. So far we have managed to explain even better in some countries why the export of at least some pig-derived products should be reopened, I'm talking about Japan, for example, there is resistance to cooked ham compared to other products. The setting really needs to be changed. Summing up, however, what has happened in recent years. We have had with the verification of cases present not on the national territory, because as you know, Sardinia was subjected to closure for 40 years and only in 2023 was it possible to reopen exports from that important Region. A first Commissioner was appointed in 2022. Unfortunately, the effects of the strategies implemented at the time by the Ministry of Health with Roberto Speranza".
Safeguard actions
Lollobrigida added: “However, I must point out that the aspects referred to in the question fall within the competences of the Ministry of Health. It is not necessary to underline that the responsibility for actions to safeguard public health, both human and animal, lies with the Ministry of Health and even in that case a commissioner was appointed. The measures adopted were not sufficient to eradicate the zoonosis. For this reason, upon the expiry of the mandate of the first Commissioner, we as a Government appointed a new Commissioner, Dr. Caputo, who operated on two fronts: he imposed high biosafety standards on companies and carried out continuous health checks, safeguarding the national pig herd and the related production sector. From the point of view of commitment to the management of the first vector of African swine fever, which are wild boars, right from the start from the first stability law we chose to impact on a hyper environmentalist vision which prevented us from ascertaining on a scientific basis that the presence of wild boars in Italy exceeds the European average seven times. And which was therefore unsustainable from the point of view of ordinary management within a complex ecosystem. To date we have opened an international table with France to exchange information, asked the European Union not to consider swine fever a problem for one nation or another, perhaps also to benefit the exports of some of the nations European governments to the detriment of others, but to work in terms of general solidarity in addressing this issue as happened in the Covid pandemic".
Support for biosecurity
The minister continues: “However, as a Ministry we have had the opportunity and the possibility to strengthen the ministerial structure with 3 and a half million in funding to support the action of the Regions, which carry out the bulk of both the depopulation action and the support action for the biosafety. We have allocated funds to help the Regions, we don't want to leave them alone, rather we want to work in choral terms as we have done up to now: 15 million for these interventions and 25 million in favor of the damaged pig farms because obviously desertifying the system would make no sense for us. We have appointed three Sub Commissioners, one to coordinate the military forces because we have asked for the intervention of the army to assist the Regions in the killing action. We have appointed as deputy commissioner Dr. Filippini who was responsible for the eradication of African swine fever from Sardinia, therefore we consider him an expert of undisputed character and Dr. Chiari who is the Director of the experimental zooprophylactic institute (IZS) of Sardinia. We had the opportunity together with them to implement not only the resources but an action which, however, I will close on this for what interests us and which you underlined guarantees and avoids the blocking of exports, an unimaginable damage in economic terms . And we have opened a table with DG SANTE in Europe because the approach must be changed, in our opinion and what we are proposing, think about the biosafety of the plants, not about generalized interventions in some areas, just because of the presence of an infected animal they close everything export or even force the slaughter of thousands and thousands of pigs. So the work we are trying to do is to convince Europe to allow regulations that guarantee exported products with respect to animal safety because as you know ASF does not touch human beings". (Source MASAF)
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