The National Food Safety Agency warns the population about the risk of pig plague in the immediate vicinity of Moldova. This disease can produce serious economic damage to animal breeders, IPN reports.

The epidemiological cases were recorded in Odessa and Nikolayev regions of Ukraine, 60 – 100 km from Moldova’s border.

The African pig plague is a very contagious infectious disease with acute development that affects wild boars and domestic pigs, regardless of race, age and sex. It is very resistant to physical, chemical and biological factors. The virus can resist for up to three months at pig farms or contaminated places, for ten weeks in bodies, for 18 months in blood kept at the temperature of +40°C, and for six years in blood conserved by freezing.

The virus is passed by contact with sick animals, directly and also indirectly, by feeding pigs on food waste, when the origin of the prepared pork is not known and through the agency of particular species of ticks that earlier parasitized on sick pigs.

There is no treatment and no efficient vaccine for this disease. Consequently, all the suspect animals will be killed. The pig plague poses no threat to humans.