Hundreds of hunters also on the pitch during the weekend just ended in the areas affected by the PSA in Liguria and Piedmont looking for carcasses and remains in order to monitor the progress of the epidemic, harmless to humans but potentially devastating for wild boar populations and pig farms. Last Saturday and Sunday on the Piedmont side at work over 350 volunteer hunters assisted by 2 molecular dogs from Tuscany. These are subjects with ENCI patent suitable for the detection of wild boar carcasses, to be used precisely in monitoring operations in the prevention and control of African swine fever.
Equally strong the operational effort in Liguria -from 15 January in the province of Genoa more than 1.000 hunters were engaged in hunting for carcasses twice a week - this continued this weekend as well. There is news of the discovery of a carcass inside the Atc Al3, on the border with Liguria, now being analyzed to see if the death is due to the virus or other causes. Against hundreds of carcasses found, 36 cases were found from 27 December to 11 February - 19 cases in Liguria and 17 in Piedmont - according to the latest report by theExperimental zooprophylactic institute of Piedmont, Liguria and Valle d'Aosta released yesterday.
The effort to involve and organize the hundreds of hunters made available was enormous, as you can well imagine; the recognition of this commitment, especially in certain ideologically connoted environments, unfortunately less! However, this is not enough to stop the work of the volunteers, belonging above all to the boar hunting teams, but not only. In the control and eradication of ASF it is crucial the effective and safe disposal of infected carcasses, given the extreme resistance of the virus. Their discovery therefore assumes a crucial role and it is no coincidence that EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) suggests using hunters and foresters, recognized as the main connoisseurs of the areas where wild boar is present, for the active search for carcasses.
That of the PSA is an epidemic in a certain sense announced, having already hit other nations, so much so that for some time both the Ministry of Health and the hunting world, Federcaccia in the lead, had taken steps to disseminate correct information among the hunters so that the problem was known and not underestimated. It is therefore completely misleading who more or less explicitly believes or affirms that hunters have so far "pretended not to see". Moreover, the very nature of the disease would have rendered and would render this type of attitude completely useless as well as counterproductive today.
The current limitations respond to operational needs to delimit the areas affected by the virus and then be able to proceed with its eradication. Alone maximum participation and collaboration on the part of hunters - even by avoiding the dissemination of news from unofficial sources - it will be able to ensure that it is possible to return to normal activities in the area as soon as possible. And this the hunting world has understood this very well, as the participation of the hundreds of volunteers undoubtedly demonstrates (Hunting Federation).