6.1 Population density of domestic pigs
Among the livestock species, pigs find an important place in Indian
economy as it not only contributes to the livelihood security of rural
masses but also improves the socio-economic status of the marginal
farmers and the weaker section of the society (NRC Pig, 2011).The
North-Eastern (NE) region of India mostly comprises of a high proportion
of tribal people where backyard pig farming is an integral part of their
way of living (Talukdar et al., 2019). Apart from NE India, pig farming
has been observed in several states of the mainland such as Jharkhand,
West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh specially among the down trodden and
tribal population as a backyard subsidiary enterprise (Kumar et al.,
2004; Jeyakumar et al., 2014; Chauhan et al., 2016; Sahu et al., 2018).
According to the latest livestock census report (2019), the current pig
population is 9.06 million (M), the highest being in the state of Assam
(2.10 M) followed by Jharkhand (1.28 M), Meghalaya (0.71 M), West Bengal
(0.54 M) and Chhattisgarh (0.53 M) (Livestock Census, 2019).Over 70% of
the pigs reared in India are of indigenous origin
(dahd.nic.in). According to studies related
to infectious diseases and group sizes, it has been found out that
outbreaks of any disease reached higher prevalence when groups are
larger and dense (Nunn et al., 2015). Majority of the marginal families
involved in backyard farming usually keeps an average of 2-3 indigenous
or crossbred pigs for fattening with zero to minimum inputs in terms of
family labour and feeding (Kumar et al., 2007; Patra et al., 2016; Singh
et al., 2019). Pig owners, specially from remote and rural settings are
observed to show keen interest in small-scale pig farming (10-15 pigs
per family) mostly with an aim to get avenues for additional income and
savings for their children’s education and medical treatment based on
the locally available resources (Chauhan et al., 2016). Even though,
pigs maintained in such locations are clustered into smaller groups, the
rural households are connected close to each other, thus predisposing
the animals to infectious animal diseases and their spread to closely
reared/in-contact animals. Therefore, considering the existing high
density of domestic pig population in India, there is every chance that
ASF might attain an endemic status if not controlled critically.