Wild boar hunting: With the opening of the big game season the ASL renews, as every year, the invitation to observe the sanitary measures to be adopted on the killed wild boars.
SASSARI - With the opening of the wild boar hunting season, the Animal Health Veterinary Service of the Sassari ASL renews, as every year, the invitation to observe the sanitary measures to be adopted on killed wild boars. In decree number 33 of 6 July this year, the regional department for hygiene and health established the sanitary measures to be applied to all animals of the swine species, both domestic and wild, as part of the swine fever eradication plan classical and African.
The fight against these two diseases has as its objective their elimination from the territory of Sardinia in order to protect and promote the trade in pork and meat products derived from them. In addition to domestic checks, health-related actions aimed at wild pigs are also planned this year, a species that can allow the disease to persist in a territory, especially when there is the possibility of contact with domestic pigs.
The regional veterinary epidemiological observatory has defined the macro-areas on which to modulate the sampling activities of wild boars throughout the territory of Sardinia. In those territories the hunters will have to take a blood and diaphragm sample from all the wild boars killed during the hunting season. In the high-risk area, which for the ASL territory of Sassari includes the municipality of Benetutti, it will also be necessary to take a sample of the spleen.
The samples, as defined in an operational meeting carried out between officials of the Zooprophylactic Institute, of the Veterinary Service of Animal Health and that of Food Hygiene and after consultation with the forestry and environmental surveillance corps, may be delivered to the offices of the Veterinary Service, to slaughterhouses, or to the forestry offices, together with the appropriate reporting forms of the hunted heads.
«During the 2009 hunting campaign - let the Sassari ASL Veterinary Service know - over 500 blood samples were sent and checked throughout the territory of our competence and all tested negative. We also hope this year a large sampling that will allow us to have reliable information on the health situation of the wild, currently favorable for all our ranges, and to be able to exclude that the virus circulates among wild boars with the risk of transmission to domestic animals ». The animal health veterinary service of the Sassari ASL is organizing training-information meetings with hunting companies and hunting associations to program the surveillance activities provided for in the plan.
Source: Alguer