Protect Our Pigs
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is inviting U.S. swine producers and pig owners to participate in the “I Protect Pigs” Photo Contest as part of this year’s Protect Our Pigs campaign. Lydia Carpenter of USDA-APHIS says this is just one example of agency efforts in preventing African Swine Fever from reaching our nation’s swine herds.
Carpenter… “ APHIS really has a series of interlocking safeguards to prevent ASF from coming into the country, and we try to hit all sort of facets and components of our prevention measures that we can. So APHIS is very vigilant in updating our preparedness and response planning. We also, very importantly, have import restrictions on pork and pork products to prevent some of these from coming into the US. We have a lot of coordination with other agencies. So we work with US Customs and Border Protection at ports of entry to prevent illegal items from coming into the us. And then USDA also trains dogs at our National Detector Dog Training Center in Georgia. So we also have a lot of campaigns to increase awareness of the risk of a SF and the Protect Our Pigs campaign is one of those, along with the don't pack Pork and pigs don't fly campaigns as well.”
The “Protect Our Pigs” campaign reinforces steps all pig owners can take to help protect our nation’s swine industry.
