A group of researchers and veterinarians put together a fact sheet dealing with the African Swine Fever that’s called “Holding Time Calculations for Feed Ingredients to Mitigate Virus Transmission.” However, they’ve revised the necessary holding time upward when it comes to determining if the African Swine Fever virus is sufficiently degraded in feedstuffs to potentially prevent transmission.
The new recommendation is to hold conventional soybean meal an average of 125 days from when it’s placed in a package, which is up from only 52 days found in previous research. The new research was funded by the Swine Health Information Center with Pork Checkoff Funds.
The study was conducted at Kansas State University using the ASF virus inside the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility.Experts recommend that producers talk with their feed suppliers and ask for the “born-on” date for all imported feed products.
Vigilance is the best protection against a potential ASF outbreak in the U.S. To further ensure the U.S. swine herd remains free of African Swine Fever, the National Pork Producers Council is asking Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue to take further measures to keep potentially infected animal feed out of the country.
