United States and Philippine Governments and Pork Sectors Collaborate to Deal with African Swine Fever

A collaborative project involving the United States and the Philippines will help address the challenges posed by African Swine Fever while helping support the continued export of U.S. pork products.USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service, the Philippine Department of Agriculture and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture are working with the University of Minnesota to deliver a project to address challenges related to African swine fever and support the safe international trade of U.S. pork products in the Philippines.

National Pork Producers Council President Terry Wolters, who travelled to the Philippines last month, says this project allows U.S. producers to collaborate with the counterparts in the Philippines who been hit hard with African Swine Fever.

Clip-Terry Wolters-National Pork Producers Council:

This program is really set up to be a series of workshops that we are going to train and work with provincial officers.There'll be an intense training program with the fellows over there in the Philippines and my understanding is we are going to conduct some in person training with them at the University of Minnesota.

Realistically it's a train the trainer program is a simple way to explain it.We intend to educate their people and help them from the diagnostic front.We're not allowed to do any research or testing with African Swine Fever on mainland United States so this provides an opportunity for us to have an active situation in the Philippines where we can collaborate and cooperate with both the U.S. and Philippines producers along with the U.S. and Philippines government officials.We're very excited to incorporate our experience and knowledge from the University of Minnesota to lead this project and ultimately take it to the field.

Wolters says the goal is to find how the virus moves, how we can better control it and ultimately eliminating the virus would be a tremendous outcome.