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Italian pig farmers have warned swine fever is threatening the country’s €8.2bn prosciutto, sausage and pork delicacies industry and their own livelihoods, as Giorgia Meloni’s government battles to stamp out the country’s worst outbreak since the 1960s.
Health authorities last month banned the transport of live pigs within a 21,000 sq km containment zone in northern Italy’s pig-producing heartland. The tough restrictions have left hundreds of farmers with about 700,000 unwanted animals, accounting for roughly 7 per cent to 8 per cent of Italy’s annual pig production.
“There is only one word that can describe the mood of the farmers now: terrified,” said Rudy Milani, president of Confagricoltura Swine Producers, a farmers’ association. “We are in a big sea with a strong wind, that is for sure. We have to survive the storm.”
Italy is home to about 8.7mn domestic pigs, and nearly 50,000 people are employed in the pork products industry. Sales of prosciutto, cured sausages and other foods generate about €8.2.bn in revenues a year, according to official statistics.
More than 50,000 pigs have been culled in Italy since mid-July, with the highly contagious African swine fever virus detected on more than 25 farms in the northern regions of Lombardia and Emilia-Romagna.
About 180 Italian soldiers, supported by drones equipped with thermal imaging cameras, have been deployed to help track movements of wild boar in the buffer zone between the affected region and areas where the virus has not been detected.
Italian agribusiness association Confagricoltura, which estimates the outbreak has cost farmers €40mn in direct losses and €75mn in indirect losses, has appealed for government compensation to assist those affected. But Rome has yet to make any commitment.
Swine fever does not affect human health but is nearly always lethal in pigs. The virus is highly resilient and can spread not just via infected animals but also on shoes, car tyres and even in cooked meats.
“All the farmers and colleagues looking inside the affected area are worried that what has happened there could happen to us,” said Milani, whose farm is not within the containment zone. “It takes very simple mistakes to spread the problem.”
Giovanni Filippini, Italy’s newly appointed extraordinary commissioner for swine fever, has sought to calm the panic, insisting the tough new restrictions on swine movements should stop the outbreak.
“The situation is complex, but it is certainly under control,” Filippini told reporters this week. “We are very determined in our application of preventive measures with the objective of limiting the circulation of the virus.
“We are asking great sacrifices of the [pig] breeders . . . the veterinary system, the regions involved, but we are determined to reach our goals,” he added.
But Filippini said Italy urgently needed to reduce its huge population of wild boar, which have been the main reservoirs of a virus first detected on the Italian mainland in January 2022.
Boar were nearly extinct in Italy at the end of the 19th century but were reintroduced in the 1950s to meet demand from sports hunters and now number an estimated 1mn-1.5mn. Filippini told Italian radio this week the country needed to cull more of the animals.
In May, the government approved a plan for 177 Italian soldiers to hunt the animals as part of a plan to reduce their population by 80 per cent over the next five years. But the proposed mass cull has encountered strong resistance from the hunting lobby — keen to maintain the lure of Italy as a destination for wealthy foreign sports hunters — and environmentalists.
The EU’s Veterinary Emergency Team — which carried out a mission to northern Italy in early July — also warned that hunting wild boar in regions where the virus was in circulation could backfire by frightening the animals into migrating elsewhere, carrying the virus with them.
“Hunting measures can have a counterproductive effect . . . and lead to the spread of the disease if not co-ordinated,” the EU team warned in its report last month. “It is recommended to hunt only in areas where the virus has not arrived . . . Hunting is just a tool and not the solution.”
Instead of trying to hunt infected animals, the EU experts advised Italy to urgently allocate more money and personnel to build fences to stop infected boar from moving into new areas, such as Tuscany.
“The epidemic seems to be moving faster than the fencing,” the report warned. “Fencing is behind schedule and may not have the desired effect of stopping the spread of swine fever to uninfected areas.”