All the stops are being pulled in efforts to keep African Swine Fever from entering Canada’s swine herd, including heightened security at borders and attempts to eradicate feral pigs that have the potential of spreading the virus if it gets through our first line of defence. 
Over the last 18 months, Alberta Pork has been partnered with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry in upgrading the feral pig pilot project to a full program. At the same time, various government and non-government organizations have partnered to improve biosecurity across the country and develop an effective response to the nightmare that would ensue if ASF were detected within a Canadian herd. 
Feral pigs are a specific target of the ASF Emergency Management Board, coordinated by the National Farmed Animal Health and Welfare Council with participation from federal and provincial government agencies as well as the Canadian Meat Council and the Canadian Pork Council. 
Working groups within the EMB were established with two goals: Prevention and preparedness, National ASF Coordinator Christa Arsenault, a veterinarian with the NFAHWC said in her presentation to Alberta Pork’s 22nd annual Red Deer Swine Technology Workshop, offered online late in October. 
“I do want people here today to realise the scope and the magnitude of how many people are involved in this process,” Arsenault said in her presentation. 
In the past three years, ASF has spread from a few pockets in Africa and Asia, exploding across all habitable continents except North and South America. The first diseased animals to reach the Americas were reported this summer on Hispaniola, the Central American island shared between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. 
Finding ASF this close sent shock waves through the rest of Latin America and put the spurs to Canadians who were already engaged in prevention and response. 

Arsenault outlined the reasons for concern: All international trade of live hogs and pork would immediately stop; the need for immediate response, and unprecedented disruption of the pork value chain. 
Various partners in the EMB have taken on roles in leading working groups tasked with specific targets, including enhanced biosecurity led by CPC. The feral pig working group falls within that mandate. 
The four western provinces have joined forces at a more tactical level after meeting in Winnipeg two years ago to develop a strategy specific to the region, said RDSTW presenter Keith Lehman, Chief Provincial Veterinarian for Alberta. 
The western strategy is wrapped around four themes: Incident management and communications; destruction and disposal of animals and waste; zoning and permitting, and financial programs to assist the industry through market closures. 
One of the key targets in North America’s defence system is the potential for ASF to find its way, possibly by illegally imported meat products that are subsequently discarded and enter the populations of feral pigs roaming freely across the continent. 
Lehman said work now underway in eradicating feral pigs from Alberta is starting to produce some success stories. Those include some of the trapping efforts, use of sniffer dogs to help find and track wild pigs and using GPS collars to follow the migrations and habitats (of feral pigs). 
Of the very little that is known and understood about the Alberta populations, it is clear that various escapees have interbred and formed a population that is unique in the world because of the environment and climatic conditions to which is has adapted, said Javier Bahamon, quality assurance and production manager for Alberta Pork. 
Alberta’s upgraded program has the objective of completely eradicating all feral pigs that roam the province, and includes establishment of a surveillance system to monitor areas of known activity. Researchers from universities in Calgary and Edmonton help gather and analyse those data to improve understanding of social interactions, habitat preferences and other behaviours unique to the population here, said Bahamon. 
With matching funds from Alberta Pork, the program has hired a contractor to track and trap lone boars as well as whole sounders in the most affected areas. Plans are in place to hire more contractors to work elsewhere in the province, he said. In the 18 months since the first contractor was hired, the husband-and-wife team has set out 10 traps and captured 40 animals. They have assisted technicians in capturing and putting radio collars on adult males, which do not travel with the family groups. It is hoped that the “Judas boars” would aid trappers and researchers by locating sounders and by providing some insight into behaviours that might help identify weak areas in pigs’ defences, said Bahamon. 
A few lone boars have been trapped and set loose, but the equipment failed prematurely and therefore did not provide as much information as had been hoped. 
The key to rooting out feral pigs is convincing people who see signs or damage to report their sightings, he said, stating that public education is as vital component of the program. 
Alongside a potential disaster to the swine industry and the economic fallout that would entail, feral pigs wreak havoc on the environment and native wildlife it supports. 
Feral pigs are large, aggressive, intelligent and highly adaptable invaders that will eat anything they can find, including bird eggs and baby deer. 
Karen Wickerson, rat and pest program specialist with Alberta Agriculture, said they destroy crops and demolish stored feed, demolish fish spawning grounds and kill any small animals they can find. Unlike most wild animals, they are a menace to potential predators as well, working in teams and armed with huge tusks. 
In a demonstration for Prairie Hog Country, Busby-area farmer Steve Kenyon demonstrated how pigs respond to threats by grabbing one of his smaller feeders by a hind leg, setting off a piercing peel of high-pitched squeals. Pigs that had been playing in the pond, snoozing in small trenches and snacking on fresh grass raced in from every corner of the pasture, ready to defend – or possibly eat – the panicked squealer. 
Wickerson said AAF has not been able to estimate the number of pigs now ravaging the landscape in Alberta. However, the number of reported sightings has increased following news reports that feral pigs had entered Elk Island National Park, located east of Edmonton. The highest levels of pig activity have been recorded in Lac Ste Anne and Woodland Counties, she said. 
Bahamon encourages farmers to do everything possible to discourage feral pigs from entering their yards, including making sure that feed and waste are safely stowed with no spillage left lying around to attract marauders. 

Alberta Invasive Species Council has set up the Squeal on Pigs campaign to encourage sighting reports and also provides sniffer dogs to help track pigs in suspect areas, he said. 
While local officials guard the home front, federal agencies have been tasked with stopping holes at the border. 
In response to an enquiry by Prairie Hog Country, media specialists Louis-Carl Brissette Lesage from Canadian Border Services Agency and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency media team issued a joint response, describing efforts now in place. 
From January 1 through November 13 of this year, 468 travellers were given written warnings and another 888 were fined for contraventions of the Agri-Food Administrative Monetary Penalties Regime. Additionally, 150 people received written warnings and another 339 were each fined $1,300 for failing to present or declare pork products. 
Lessage Brissette said CBSA thoroughly screens travellers and goods entering Canada with closer examinations of those who may pose a threat, especially involving food, plant or animal (FPA) risks. CBSA ensures that its officers are aware of the impact of ASF and has “strategically deployed resources” to focus on personally and commercially imported goods. He did not elaborate on those particular resources. 
Lessage Brissette also described an outreach campaign created in response to ASF, advising travellers of the importance of declaring FPA items to its officers. 
That campaign includes the following: 
*Advisory posters at 18 airports within Canada, printed in 16 different languages 
*Distribution of those posters to airlines in international locations through CBSA liaison officers 
*Development of a handout for officers to give travellers who have visited a farm while abroad 
*Creation of a graphic for digital monitors at airports, informing travellers that they will need to declare FPA items 
*Co-sponsoring of the CFIA engagement with airlines to conduct ASF announcements to passengers 
*An ongoing outreach campaign on social media and the CBSA website. 
The CFIA team advises that Canada is taking necessary precautions to prevent the spread of ASF from affected countries: 
“The CFIA assessed the risk of ASF entry into Canada and found that the illegal/undeclared importation of pork products through international mail and travellers poses a significant concern, particularly as borders continue to open up for international travel.” 
It has ramped up its oversight of international mail and screening of travellers entering Canada from ASF affected regions, including use of detector dogs, and works closely with CBSA on the awareness campaign cited above. 
CFIA meets and exchanges information regularly with the United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and updates the ASF situation that had developed in Central America. 
Canada is also an active participant in the Regional Steering Committee of the Global Framework for the Progressive Control of Transboundary Animal Diseases, headed by Dr Jaspinder Komal, vice-president of CFIA’s Science Branch. 
Within its role in the EMB, as described in Arsenault’s presentation, the CFIA aids in providing leadership and strategic direction relating to risk management for ASF. In 2021-22, the EMB is focussed on developing a national exercise, feral pig management, biosecurity, readiness and recovery and support programming. 
Details of the EMB were to be discussed in more detail during Alberta Pork’s Annual General Meeting, scheduled for November 25 and including presentations from the speakers cited above as well as by Red Deer-based veterinarian Egan Brockhoff. 
Presentations given to Swine Tech by Lehman and Arsenault can be viewed on the Swine Tech page within Alberta Pork’s website, albertapork.com
To report signs and sightings of feral pigs, please email  af.wildboar@gov.ab.ca or contact the appropriate municipality. •
— By Brenda Kossowan