The army takes the field against swine fever

From 1 November, the army will also take the field against swine fever. This was announced by the Extraordinary Commissioner for the PSA, Giovanni Filippini, during a hearing in the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday 22 October. 'To the military,' Filippini said, 'we will give precise indications on the territories where we need surveillance and where we need to put the cages to catch wild boar. They will go ahead in a coordinated and centrally managed manner". In the interventions, alongside the army, provincial police, civil protection and specialised companies will also be involved.

In order to contain the spread of the disease, which travels mainly through the movement of infected wild boars, Filippini then announced that barriers along the motorways would be reinforced: 'I am about to sign two agreements, the first with the Autostrade concessionaires and the other with the Cisa concessionaire. These barriers will be put up on motorway land, so the concessionaires will also guarantee us maintenance'. On the barriers, the commissioner assured, 'we are running. In two months we have already closed Milan, so we are talking about hundreds of kilometres. We will then give priority to the Cisa, even though it is really very complicated as a territory. The Ministry of Health is purchasing cages to capture the animals, which we will only give to the army and the provincial police to manage within the viral expansion control areas'. The final piece of the strategy put in place by Filippini, whose appointment dates back to last August, will be the arrival shortly of a new sub-commissioner with responsibility for wild boar depopulation, starting in the parks and especially in the viral expansion zone.

After so many months of stalemate in the fight against swine fever, which has already caused tens of thousands of culls on pig farms, especially in central and northern Italy, the breeders' associations applaud this new interventionist phase: 'The placement of barriers on motorways to prevent the movement of wild boars and their depopulation respond to the proposals launched by Coldiretti two years ago,' the association wrote in a note. 'Now these measures must be accompanied by the immediate payment of compensation for the farms affected. In addition to the direct damage, linked to the loss of animals, the indirect damage must also be included, with the farms forced to interrupt all activities, including those of restocking".

On the other hand, the issue of public veterinarians, whose staffing levels are under-staffed compared to the needs dictated by the emergency, is still open. 'We should quickly get new veterinarians,' Filippini admitted during the hearing, 'we are also in difficulty because we have a category of professionals who are retiring. In addition, the veterinarians who follow the outbreaks cannot return to other farms for a week, so we need to rotate the staff'.