The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has stepped up its laboratory capabilities to test for African swine fever, Greg Ibach, USDA Undersecretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs announced last week. [Source: furthering its overall ASF preparedness efforts with the implementation of a surveillance plan. USDA added ASF testing to its existing classical swine fever surveillance. The agency can now test samples from the same high-risk animals using the same overall process but will test for both diseases instead of one.
Ibach said the United States is continuing to work domestically as well as internationally to fight ASF.
"We are continuing to work with states and do exercises," Ibach said. "We’re going to have another one here in a few weeks that again will focus on North America."
The exercise will also involve neighboring countries with an eye on possibly expanding anti-ASF cooperation.
"We’re going to have Canada and Mexico both involved with that exercise and Chile is going to come and be an observer during that exercise as well," Ibach said. "We hope to work with Chile to be able to cohost a discussion about keeping African swine fever out of South America as well so that we can create a protection zone across the entire Western Hemisphere."