Pigs being culled at farm struck by massive plague outbreak

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A total of 3,294 pigs have so far been put down on the Druvas Unguri farm which was hit by an outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) last week, Ilze Meistere, a spokeswoman for the Food and Veterinary Service, told LETA August 6.

She said that 3,294 pigs had been put down and their carcasses taken to Grow Energy company for disposal. Of these animals, 929 were killed on Monday.

Meistare was unable to project how long the slaughtering of the pigs might take. The process is expected to take around nine days, but it depends on various factors like the capacity of the company processing the byproducts. The work is going as planned.

The culling of the pigs on the Druvas Unguri farm was started last Saturday.

Maris Zusts, chairman of the Saldus regional council, said earlier that the culling and burning of the pigs might take a couple of weeks. The carcasses of the slaughtered pigs are being burned at Grow Energy company in Limbazi.

Last Friday, the government allocated EUR 367,000 to the ASF-stricken Druvas Unguri farm. The money will come from the government's emergency funds.

According to the agricultural database, the farm has 15,570 pigs, and all of the should be culled in order to stop the spread of the disease.

The ASF outbreak on the Druvas Unguri farm is the largest outbreak of the infection in Latvia since 2014 when the first ASF case was recorded not far from the Belarusian border.

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