A new vaccine could offer full protection against African swine fever (ASF), US scientists have announced, a disease which has caused the deaths of millions of pigs in Asia and Europe.
The vaccine has been shown to prevent and effectively protect both European and Asian bred pigs against the current circulating Asian strain of the virus, the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) said.
The majority of pigs used in the global food supply are produced in Asia, in particular China, where the virus has been causing outbreaks and devastating losses to the pig industry.
ASF was originally detected in 2007 in the Republic of Georgia and is known to cause virulent, deadly disease outbreaks in wild and domesticated pigs.
Since the original outbreak, ASF has had a widespread and lethal impact on swine herds in various countries in Eastern Europe and throughout Asia.
Earlier this year, Germany's agricultural ministry confirmed the country's first cases of the disease in domestic pigs.
Although the virus is causing profound economic losses to the global pork industry, there have so far not been any outbreaks in the UK.
Despite this, the government launched an exercise in the summer which simulated an outbreak of ASF in the UK, as part of contingency plans to contain and eliminate the disease.
The risk of the virus being brought into the UK in animal products from affected countries, including from illegal imports, is currently a ‘medium’ risk
The USDA's ARS said on Thursday (30 September) that scientists had developed a vaccine candidate with the ability to be commercially produced.
Their findings, published in the journal Transboundary and Emerging Diseases, also show that a commercial partner can replicate experimental level results and prevent the spread of the virus.
"We are excited that our team's research has resulted in promising vaccine results that are able to be repeated on a commercial level, in different pig breeds, and by using a recent ASFV isolate," said ARS researcher Douglas Gladue.
"This signals that the live attenuated vaccine candidate could play an important role in controlling the ongoing outbreak threatening the global pork supply."
The onset of immunity was revealed in approximately one-third of the pigs by second week post-vaccination, with full protection in all achieved by the fourth week.
A commercial vaccine for ASF will be an important part of controlling the disease in outbreak areas, researchers said.
They will continue to determine the safety and efficacy of the vaccine under commercial production conditions and are closely working with their commercial partner in Vietnam.
"This is a major step for science and agriculture," said ARS researcher Manuel Borca. "We are working carefully to see our vaccine candidate commercialised through the joint efforts of the US government and our commercial partner."
To date, ARS has successfully engineered and patented five ASF experimental vaccines and has executed seven licenses with pharmaceutical companies to develop the vaccines.
It comes as the UK's four Chief Veterinary Officers recently said the risk of ASF arriving in the UK was 'ever present' and would have a 'devastating impact' on the pig sector.
"We regularly test our contingency plans in this way to ensure that we are ready to respond to potential future disease outbreaks," they said in a statement.
"Everyone can do their bit to help stop animal diseases spreading to this country through simple actions such as not bringing any pork products back to the UK and disposing of leftovers and food waste in secure bins that wildlife cannot access."
