News Archive

Headed by Professor George Milne of the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, researchers at The University of Western Australia (UWA) have concluded that a classical swine fever outbreak, starting in north Queensland, could spread widely through Australia’s 20 million feral pigs, potentially posing a risk to Australia’s domestic pig population.

“Our computer model simulated the effect of wild pigs moving across the landscape and showed how classical swine fever could spread among feral pigs in the right seasonal conditions, becoming endemic and almost impossible to eradicate,” Professor Milne said.

“The time of the outbreak and seasonal factors are absolutely critical to how quickly the disease could spread and our modeling clearly shows the greatest danger of a rapidly spreading epidemic is at the start of the dry season, which is about now, when feral pigs gather around water sources.

“We know male pigs travel great distances and can spread the disease far and wide, so an effective strategy to combat an outbreak during the dry season would involve targeting adult male herds,” Professor Milne said.

Dr Darryl D’Souza, General Manager, Research and Innovation at Australian Pork Limited, said that classical swine fever could have a very serious impact on the pig industry.

“Classical swine fever, last reported in Australia in 1961, could have a devastating impact on the industry through increasing mortality and morbidity and reducing reproductive performance,” he said.

“It’s vital that any classical swine fever outbreak in feral pigs is controlled quickly, as it poses a serious threat to Australia’s two-and-a-half million domestic pigs and an industry annually contributing almost $1 billion to the Australian economy.

“Prediction models are excellent tools and will certainly assist the industry to predict swine fever outbreaks and hence effective management strategies can be developed and implemented,” Dr D’Souza said.

He stressed that classical swine fever was not related to the H1N1 (swine flu) virus, which is not present in Australian pigs and which the World Health Organisation assures can’t be spread by eating properly handled and prepared pork.

www.ioa.uwa.edu.au

Authorised by ‘Institute of Agriculture – UWA’ and issued on its behalf byBrendon Cant & Associates, Tel 08 9384 1122

Media references

Professor George Milne, Tel 08 6488 2281, Mob 0417 820 768

Dr Darryl D’Souza, Tel 02 6285 2200

Professor Kadambot Siddique, UWA IOA Director, Tel 08 6488 7012, Mobile 0411 155 396