African swine fever (ASF) has been detected in wild boar in Greece for the first time, as Red Tractor recently warned the disease would 'devastate' the UK's national herd.
A wild boar in the Central Macedonia region, a mountainous area of Greece about 7km from the Bulgarian border, was found earlier this week with the disease.
ASF has been a known problem among the wild boar population for some years in Bulgaria.
Whilst this is the first outbreak in wild boar in Greece, ASF was detected in a backyard herd in February 2020 in Central Macedonia, 40km south of the new finding.
The 2020 outbreak was an isolated case and of the 32 pigs on the farm, only one tested positive.
Whilst ASF doesn’t affect humans, it is a highly contagious and fatal notifiable disease that is present in parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Mainland Italy recently confirmed its first ever case of the strain currently circulating in Europe, Asia, and Central America.
In the UK, risk of ASF remains 'high' for human-mediated transmission. Red Tractor recently warned that the UK would be 'devastated' if the disease were to reach its shores.
Responding to the new outbreak in Greece, the National Pig Association (NPA) said it served as a reminder that there was a wildlife vector contributing to the movement of the disease in Europe.
"In this country we must be cognisant of this movement and any shift this this makes on the risk to the British pig herd," the body said.
In October 2022, authorities in Dover uncovered and seized large volumes of raw meat from countries that had reported ASF in their pig herds.
The risk of ASF infected pork being brought into the UK via people is risk assessed as ‘high’, even though the overall risk for all pathways is medium.
