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).