Efforts to prevent African swine fever in Vinh city

Spraying disinfectant chemicals on livestock in the Ben Thuy 1 bridge area. Photo: Nguyen Hai

The City People's Committee decided to establish a quarantine checkpoint at Ben Thuy 1 bridge area and set up two interdisciplinary mobile working groups to control the transportation of animals and animal products and prevent African swine fever in Hung Chinh and Nghi Lien communes.

At the same time, wards and communes have increased their mobilization of people to clean and disinfect livestock barns. Up to now, after having a plan to allocate chemicals from the province's source, livestock households and pig farms have sprayed disinfectants. The city has also allocated 70 million VND from the budget to support the force on duty to block and check for African swine fever.

Mr. Duong Van Minh, owner of a slaughterhouse in Hung Chinh, said that before the epidemic, the slaughterhouse slaughtered from 50 to a maximum of 70 pigs per day, but now it only slaughters 20 pigs per day. Photo: Nguyen Hai

Mr. Luu Ngoc Tu - Chairman of Hung Chinh Commune People's Committee said: The whole commune currently has a total herd of about 400 pigs and 1 centralized slaughterhouse. Therefore, on the one hand, the commune has increased propaganda for livestock owners and slaughterhouse owners to disinfect and sterilize according to regulations; on the other hand, the commune has cleared out pork selling points along the roadside; prepared some essential supplies such as lime powder, chemicals and plans to arrange human resources at 3 points of entry to the commune and the city: Cau Ma (National Highway 46), Cau Duoc market gate and the road from Hung My commune.

With about 12 stalls, Hung Chinh market used to sell 15-20 pigs a day, but now due to concerns, there are few buyers. Photo: Nguyen Hai

The city currently has a total herd of about 6,400 pigs, mainly raised by people in suburban communes; the amount of meat consumed each day is about 20 tons. Being a key area located on the North-South traffic axis, with provincial roads passing through, but up to now, Vinh City has not had any epidemics, which is a great effort of the city and the veterinary sector. However, due to the difficulty in controlling unconcentrated slaughterhouses in Nghi Phu and the slaughtered pigs often having unknown origins, the risk of epidemics is very high.

Mr. Nguyen Tien Duc - Head of Vinh City Veterinary Station

Currently, in addition to setting up a 24/7 checkpoint at Ben Thuy 1 bridge to control pigs transported from Ha Tinh, the city also continuously urges and reminds communes to strengthen control and prevent the risk of disease spreading from the North (Nghi Loc and Hung Nguyen have had the disease).

However, through actual research, besides the timely direction of the city, local authorities, especially in suburban communes and communes with many pig slaughterhouses, have not really focused and resolutely prevented the disease.