Pig farmer Alberto Cavagnini has slaughtered 1,600 of his pigs because of swine fever, a virus that is threatening Italy’s €20 billion pork industry, including its world-famous prosciutto.
The disease, which is fatal for pigs and a disaster for the economy, has hit the northern regions of Lombardy, Piedmont and Liguria hard, with neighbouring France also in turmoil.
Official figures show that in Italy between January 2022 and September this year, just under 25,000 pigs on 50 farms and almost 2,500 wild boars were diagnosed with the virus.
Cavagnini is lucky: the breeder from Brescia in northern Italy owns several farms and can absorb some of the blow from the cull, “but many breeders have only one farm” and lose all their cattle, he told AFP.
In 2024 alone, between 50,000 and 60,000 pigs were slaughtered throughout Italy.
EU experts criticised Rome’s handling of the crisis after visiting the Mediterranean country in July.
“The overall disease control strategy in northern Italy needs to be improved. Each region is implementing its own measures, with minimal coordination with its neighbours,” a report said.
Brussels recommended a single strategy for all of northern Italy and the government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni appointed a special commissioner to set the rules.
Movement of pigs within the infected and adjacent areas is prohibited, except towards slaughterhouses. Access to farms is limited to the absolute minimum.
“At the moment… we are building barriers” to create zones that limit the movement of wild boars, Francesco Feliziani of the National Reference Centre for Swine Fever (CEREP) told AFP.
– ‘Very concerned’ –
Since January 2022, France has been on high alert in areas bordering northern Italy, particularly in the Hautes-Alpes, Alpes de Haute-Provence and Alpes-Maritimes.
And in June, an Italian-French technical group was created to strengthen “cross-border cooperation for more effective management” of what is “a major threat”, the French government said.
People working in Italy’s pig sector, which generates an annual turnover of 20 billion euros ($22 billion) and employs 100,000 people, are “very worried”, Ettore Prandini, head of Italy’s largest agricultural association Coldiretti, told AFP.
According to farmer Cavagnini, around 10 million pigs are kept on Italian farms and the loss of income is estimated at around 25 million euros.
Affected farmers receive compensation from the state, which is paid out on average two years later.
But the virus is also affecting hundreds of breeders, who are unable to transport pigs between farms and are suffering losses of “hundreds of millions” of euros that are not covered, Cavagnini said.
Commissioner Giovanni Filippini said on Thursday that the government had “taken all measures to prevent the transmission of the virus” and that there had been “no new outbreaks in recent days”.
But Coldiretti’s Prandini said farmers should be given more financial support, such as a moratorium on loan repayments, warning that the virus may be contained but not gone entirely.
“If we do not manage to completely eradicate the presence of wild boar in these areas, there is a risk that… the crisis will pass and then return,” he said.
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