Organized slaughterhouses are ghastly places for breeding all kinds of material afflictions to society, country and the people in general. (SB 1.7.37, from purport by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada)
African swine fever (ASF) is a highly lethal haemorrhagic disease that infects domestic and wild pigs. The currently existing varieties of this disease do not infect people. However, it is not possible to completely rule out the possibility that the ASF virus could mutate into a strain that is transmitted to humans, given the genetic complexity of the virus. ASF differs from “classical swine fever” or Hog Cholera, which is actually caused by a different virus. At this juncture, there is no approved vaccine against ASF (unlike classical swine fever) and no effective treatment. It has escalated to become the largest recorded animal disease outbreak, inflicting economic losses on a global scale.
ASF is a transboundary animal disease that can be spread by live or dead pigs (domestic or wild), and by pork products [1]. The ASF virus possesses a high degree of environmental resistance. Consequently, transmission can also occur from exposure to contaminated feed and even non-living objects such as transport and delivery vehicles, containers, knives, equipment, shoes, clothes, etc. Farmers tend to sell their pigs as soon as ASF is reported in their vicinity, which has contributed to the widespread distribution of the disease. Although more than 70% of ASF cases have been a result of contaminated vehicles, control of the virus becomes far more complicated once it becomes established in tick populations which serve as biological vectors. The virus can persist for long periods in uncooked pork products which are often fed to pigs in food scraps (pig swill)—hog farmers contributed to the ASF epidemic by feeding contaminated pig swill to their pigs.
The disease was first documented in 1921, but until 2007 outbreaks were primarily restricted to sub-Sahara Africa, South America, the Caribbean, and Sardinia. In 2007, ASF was unintentionally introduced into the Caucasus region of Eurasia, most likely as a result of contaminated pig swill from Africa. This highly virulent virus caused outbreaks on pig farms, and also became pervasive throughout wild boar populations. From 2007 to 2016, ASF spread across Eastern Europe. Although Chinese authorities detected ASF in 2018, the disease had gained a foothold in China’s pig herd before it was actually reported, allowing the virus to spread rapidly before it was officially recognized [2]. ASF has continued to cross national borders, infecting wild boar in the Baltic region, parts of Central Europe (e.g., Poland, Hungary) and Belgium, as of June 2019. The potential for further transmission is vast—in the last several years, the ASF virus has been detected in more than 50 countries that account for 75% of all the pigs in the world. About a quarter of the global pig population is expected to die as a result of this epidemic.
ASF has proven difficult to combat due to its complex molecular structure and high genetic variability. The virus infects and replicates in macrophages, causes cell death in uninfected B and T lymphocytes, and destroys the immune system, leading to death due to extreme hemorrhagic fever and massive destruction of lymphocytes in lymph tissues. The virus is a double-stranded DNA genome with codes for almost 170 proteins, far greater than many other viruses—some Ebola strains only have 7 proteins. Research efforts have discovered that the ASF virus encodes various proteins associated with immune evasion.
The traditional / classical method of creating a vaccine has not been successful in the case of ASF. Typically, this strategy involves killing or inactivating the virus and injecting it into healthy animals to prompt their immune system to produce antibodies that protect against future infections. When this approch was implemented against ASF, it was found that the protective antibodies produced were inadequate to kill off the infection.
A more promising way to induce an adaptive immune response against ASF is to introduce a less virulent strain of the virus into animals. The most efficient method of attenuating or partially disarming the virus is based on gene deletion techniques. In this targeted approach, the virus is genetically modifed by deleting genes that make it virulent, and then vaccinating animals with it.
Despite the progress that has been achieved to date, it could be as long as several years before an ASF vaccine is deployed. The development of an effective treatment has been impeded by a still incomplete understanding of this virus, with its many undefined features and its high degree of genetic variability. For practical purposes, an effective vaccine is not available at the time of this writing. More time is still required for moving various candidate vaccines through their developmental stages, after which they will be subject to a battery of tests to ensure they are safe and effective. An additional waiting period will then be necessary to receive approval for, and to register, the vaccine with the relevant regulatory bodies.
If and when a vaccine is created and approved, it would then have to be produced and distributed on a massive scale due to the sheer magnitude of the outbreak. Moreover, vaccination is only one component of an effective response to ASF. Many countries are not accurately reporting their cases, implying that the true extent of ASF is greater than is currently indicated. Improved surveillance, detection, and reporting are necessary to support the immense logistical challenges associated with the distribution and administration of medications. With modern air transportation, diseases can spread globally in a matter of days or even hours, meaning that it will be necessary to efficiently move anti-viral medications to areas where needed, in an environment that maintains its effectiveness.
Various countries are attempting to develop a coordinated response to ASF, as it is transmitted from one part of the world to another. However, containment strategies are exceedingly difficult to implement, in part because they depend critically on international collaboration. Detection, containment, and eradication mechanisms require cooperation from countries that possess neither the administrative structures nor the political will to stringently enforce these measures.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the United States Department of Agriculture have been monitoring the proliferation of ASF virus for years. Nevertheless, the rapid movement of this disease across major pork producing regions of the world in the last year has taken policymakers by surprise. Being ignorant of Srila Prabhupada’s teachings, governmental and intergovernmental agencies are always caught off guard when they are confronted with the high price of animal slaughter, including pestilence. "The material world is itself a place always full of anxieties, and by encouraging animal slaughter the whole atmosphere becomes polluted more and more by war, pestilence, famine and many other unwanted calamities." (SB 1.7.37, purport)
As Western-style diets are steadily adopted throughout the world, it is becoming increasingly clear that livestock farming systems are in fact incubation centers for diseases. Animal agriculture is the functional equivalent of a time bomb. Viruses are constantly changing, and weaker forms are known to mutate into highly pathogenic forms that render existing treatments obsolete—viruses have been evolving and adapting, developing traits that allow them to evade existing vaccines and flourish in a vaccinated world. Moreover, seventy five percent of emerging diseases in humans are of animal origin. Humans are at risk of being killed in large numbers by cross-species transmission of illnesses between, pigs, humans, birds, and other animals—approximately 40 animal diseases have jumped to humans [3], as these pathogens have mutated and moved up the food chain.
Commercial agriculture and meat-centered diets incur risks that are completely unnecessary, as materialists seek to perpetuate their insane activities, hell-bent on satisfying their taste for meat, even to the point of risking pandemics and millions of human deaths that originate from livestock diseases. Without minimizing or downplaying these hazards, we do not advocate vegetarianism simply as a means of removing the economic, social, and environmental problems that inevitably result from animal agriculture. Rather, we recognize that meat eating is the main barrier to understanding God, according to the Supreme Lord Krishna’s pure representative, Srila Prabhupada. Whatever seemingly pious things meat eaters may do, those who are animal killers, meat-eaters, can never understand God. It is simply not possible.
==========================================================[1] The ASF virus can survive for several months in processed meat, and for several years in frozen carcasses, which amplifies the risk of cross-border transmission among countries that import and export meat products.
[2] The ASF epidemic has been particularly severe in China, which threatens the global supply of the blood thinner heparin, most of which is produced by Chinese pigs.
[3] From 1981-2006, about 40 animal diseases transitioned to human hosts. It is likely that instances of cross-species transmission have continued to grow since 2006. In that case, the current number of animal illnesses that have jumped to humans would be greater than 40.