ty. ASF is an extremely resistant virus and can spread quickly among populations that are kept in poor sanitary conditions. Many experts agree that diseases such as ASF will continue to spread throughout African pig farms if proper sanitary conditions are not met and proper quarantine's aren't administered to try and curb the spread of this disease. Since there is no vaccine available, destroying infected animals is the primary method for eliminating the disease. In a different outbreak in Cote d'Ivore, almost 22,000 pigs were killed by ASF and another 100,000 were slaughtered in an attempt to eradicate the disease.(2) Yet another recent outbreak of ASF has surfaced in West African country of Benin on the Nigerian border. Authorities reported almost 3000 pigs dead and the FAO has sent a team called EMPRES (Emergency Prevention System for Transboundary Animal and Plant Pests and Diseases) to investigate just as they did in both Cape Verde and Cote d'Ivore. (2) The team was put together in an effort to control plant and animals diseases that can stress a countries vital food security issues. A different disease called Classic Swine fever, which isn't as deadly a strain is what the Benin officials say it is, but the EMPRES team fears this could be the deadly ASF version. An acute problem that comes without warning, ASF can completely destroy a countries pork industry because once the news gets out, no country will trade or buy any livestock with that country. This can have serious implications on meat eating cultures. In Cote d'Ivore, all pig sales were stopped in 1996 and continued again in 1997 with a total loss estimated to be around US $18million. The FAO report says that around 60 percent of Benin's populations relies solely on agriculture and "stocks of 600 000 pigs play a vital role in income generation and national food security."(3) There are various methods used to farm pigs in both Benin and Cote d'Ivore. Commercial farms are t...
