Risk of ASF in Nepal
ASF is accountable for creating havoc in the pig industry across the world resulting in deaths of domestic and wild pigs. Even though there have been historical reports of the existence of this disease across Africa, America, Europe and Caribbean (Dei Giudici et al., 2019), its recent introduction was in 2007 in Caucasus, Georgia and is now present and rapidly spreading across Europe, Asia, and Africa (Karger et al., 2019). Being a transboundary animal disease (TAD), the easy spread of the virus through the pigs and pork, contaminated feed, and equipment present a great threat of disease transmission to the pig importing countries lacking proper surveillance and quarantine (Niederwerder et al., 2019).
Nepal is a small landlocked country bordering China in the north and India in the remaining directions. Therefore, the emergence and prevalence of new diseases in either of these neighboring countries exhibit the high risk of transmission threat in Nepal owing to the leaky border, ineffective surveillance and illegal importing of the products from the neighbors. Nepal has both conventional and modern pig farms. The majority of pig farms in Nepal are conventional which represent small household farms with 1-2 pigs. They are raised on kitchen waste, grain by-products, and food industry by-products (Gurung et al., 2014). Open border with India and illegal trading are the major challenges for Nepal to stop the entry of ASF in Nepal (Acharya & Wilson, 2020; Lim et al., 2019). Lack of vaccination of ASF (Sanchez-Vizcaıno et al., 2015) and the traditional way of pig rearing in Nepal could lead to a massive economic loss if the ASF outbreak occurs in the coming future.
Since the introduction of the first case of ASF in early August of 2018 to late November 2019, China culled around 12 million pigs from 160 outbreaks losing billon of Yuan (Ding & Wang, 2020). A bilateral agreement between Nepal and China regarding the exchange of pig products and pig farmers may act as a peril (RSS, 2019). Similarly, India confirmed its first ASF cases in mid-May in Assam and Arunachal state that have already killed around 15,000 pigs in the states (Bhattacharyya, 2020). Besides China and India, there are several Asian countries like South Korea, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Hongkong, Tibet, and Vietnam that impose constant menace to the Nepalese pig industry directly or indirectly through several international boundaries (Normile, 2019). With the initial understanding of the infection in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam through Tibetan borders, the transmission in Laos and Myanmar, and a high number of deaths in China, the possibility of entry and existence of the virus in Nepal through the chain of international borders cannot be overlooked (Agarwala & Gill, 2020; Normile, 2019).