Australia’s pork industry could be wiped out by African swine fever

The nation’s borders are on high alert for a virus that could wipe out the pork industry

A pig on the farm run by Angie and Graeme Dent. Picture: Colin Murty

A day before the launch of a report warning of a catastrophe if just one pig disease reached our shores, two men were jailed in Western Australia for endangering the industry after smuggling pig semen in shampoo bottles.

Pig farmers Torben Soerensen and Henning Laue pleaded guilty in August to arranging for concealed semen to be brought in by a courier from their native Denmark in a scam that lasted several years.

It had been a lucky escape for the pork industry — but not for the two men. On August 13, Soerensen was sentenced to three years’ jail and Laue received two years. The judge said imprisonment would send a message that “arrogant disregard” of the safety of Australia’s livestock industry would be met with serious punishment.

The sentences reflect intensifying fears of an outbreak of the potentially devastating African swine fever in Australia.

Australia’s new defence against African swine fever — which kills almost 100 per cent of infected animals and is running rampant in Asia — has led to six international passengers being refused entry and their visas cancelled after they failed to declare food products in their luggage.

Torben Soerensen at his Kojonup piggery. Source: ABC

Soerensen and Laue’s scheme worked like clockwork. The Danish courier would arrive at Perth airport and pass unnoticed through quarantine and Customs. That one man carried a half-dozen bottles of shampoo or skin-product containers, which did not raise any alarm.

Then the race was on. The perishable contraband of semen portions had to be driven as fast as possible to a breeding facility, one of three pig farms owned by the men’s employer, GD Pork, in Pinjarra, south of Perth.

“Please make sure the ladies are ready on Tuesday when they arrive,” the Danish semen supplier would write cryptically in emails presented to the court.

The “ladies” were the dozens of sows inseminated with illegal semen from Denmark’s finest boars. The scam was designed to improve their bloodstock and increase the size of piglet litters.

There was a smell — literally and metaphorically — around the pig operation. Neighbours reported an intolerable stench and pig carcasses left along a roadside. Then there was the company’s odd boast of piglet production rates higher than the industry average.

Henning Laue. Source: Linkedin

So where was this superior pig sperm, which the men described in covert emails only as “special semen”, coming from?

And wasn’t it just a matter of time before genetic testing showed the little Pinjarra piggies were carrying the genes of Danish dads?

In mid-2017, a warrant was issued to take samples of pig hair for genetic testing. And canny quarantine officers holding the shampoo bottles noticed they were unusually heavy. The game was up. The sentencing hearing was told that 199 sows had been inseminated and more than 2000 piglets produced as a result of offences stretching back across three years.

The men knew it was illegal; for nearly a quarter of a century, no import licences for pig semen into Australia have been issued. The ban is because of escalating fear of virulent pig diseases such as African swine fever, which has wiped out a quarter of the world’s pig population, and has no vaccine and no cure. Although not harmful to humans, the fever kills virtually all the pigs infected with it.

That the Danish semen ultim­ately proved not to contain disease was secondary — Denmark does not have ASF but it does have “pig plague” or porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome. And the men insisted the imported sperm must be PRRS-free only after they realised it would look odd if an outbreak occurred on their farm in Australia.

Angie and Graeme Dent at their West Australian piggery. Picture: Colin Murty

Biosecurity fears

The case was also a timely reminder of the biosecurity threat posed by illegal imports. A day after they were sentenced, on Aug­ust 14, the Australian pork industry released its report into the economic impact of African swine fever if it ever crossed our borders and infected our pigs.

It makes harrowing reading. A major outbreak at several locations could cost up to $2.03bn, according to the report Economic Analysis of African Swine Fever Incursion into Australia.

Exports of Australian pork would shut down and domestic sales of pork would drop by 25 per cent in the first six weeks.

Destroying all infected pigs would be the only way to eradicate the disease. Even in a scenario limiting the infection to one state, such as Victoria, it would result in 23,000 pigs destroyed, the report states, and one to three years before the industry was restored to normal. A multi-site infection would mean the livelihoods of about 3700 pig producers — who produce 420,000 tonnes of pig meat a year — would be in jeopardy, not to mention 77 abattoirs that slaughter pigs.

Warning for travellers

Australian Pork Limited chief executive Margo Andrae says the threat of incursion from African swine fever cannot be taken lightly. “Not only is our pork supply at stake but the jobs of 36,000 Australians are at risk,” she says.

“Australia is ASF-free but we are seeing the biggest global destruction of protein in history. Twenty-five per cent of the pork protein has gone, and that’s having a big impact.”

She says African swine fever has been around since the 1950s “but now it’s more and more easily transmissible”, she says.

“People are still sending meat products via post or in their luggage. We’ve seen how 40-odd ­tonnes of meat products have been pulled up at our borders and a large percentage of that — 48.7 per cent, I believe — had fragments of African swine fever.”

Andrae is referring to alarming figures from CSIRO testing of pork product seized at Australia’s international airports. Nearly 50 per cent tested positive for ASF, up from 15 per cent a mere nine months ago.

In the last testing in September, 202 of 418 samples contained ASF virus fragments. Three products also tested positive for foot-and-mouth disease, another scourge for global pig herds.

“People continue to risk our $5.3bn pork industry across the country,” Andrae says. “There’s no vaccine and it will kill the pigs if it gets in.”

She cites the case of a Vietnamese woman who arrived at Sydney airport in October as the kind of nightmare scenario feared by the pork industry. The woman said she had nothing to declare. But when Customs officers opened her bags, they found 10kg of fresh squid, quail, eggs and — most alarming — 4.5kg of raw pork.

The virus is not harmful to humans but causes haemorrhagic fever in pigs that is almost always fatal.

The woman is among six passengers who since October have had their visitor visas cancelled on the spot and sent home. Under toughened biosecurity measures, she cannot apply for another visa to Australia for three years.

“This is a clear signal to future travellers that Australia is taking this issue very seriously,” Andrae says. “We are at risk because it’s a unique virus that can live for a long time without a host. You could have been somewhere overseas three weeks ago and it could still be on your footwear.

“We’ve also realised we have a very big problem with feral pigs across this country as well. They could come into contact with bred pigs and spread the disease.”

Plans are afoot to trap feral populations and remove them, WA Pork Producers Association executive officer Jan Cooper says.

“Shooting them out can backfire; if you startle them they disappear further into the bush,” she says.

“We’re even worried about the picnickers who throw their ham sandwich into the bush.”

WAPPA president Graeme Dent, a pig farmer whose wife Angie and son Matthew work in the business, says the sandwich story is not far-fetched. The African swine fever virus is tough, he says, and can survive in meat products for a long time.

“If a piece of infected ham is taken on a picnic in the bush, and they throw a bit away, a bird could pick it up. It then shits somewhere and a pig picks it up. Bingo, it’s done.”

Devastating impact

Dent says ordinary Australians don’t understand that an outbreak would have a devastating and widespread impact.

“As an industry we’re frightened, but if this gets into Australia it will affect every Australian, the price of their meat, their protein,” he says.

“It’s already having an effect. My sheep will end up in China because they are trying to fill the protein gap. But I’m a mixed farmer so I also grow barley, which goes to feed pigs. The price has dropped by 30 per cent because there are no pigs left in China to feed. They were a major importer of our feed barley, so it’s now dropped nearly $60 a tonne.

“We have to educate the public because this disease will be walked in on somebody’s shoes or in a suitcase. It’s everybody’s responsibility to protect our borders.

“If Customs opens someone’s bag and there’s 4kg of pork in their suitcase, why shouldn’t they go straight to jail?”

As for the two Pinjarra men, one of whom Dent knew well, “they deserved their sentences”.

The Pinjarra pig saga has a twist in the tail. While the genetic material in the shampoo bottles could be destroyed easily, the genes living on in thousands of pigs born from the illegal semen could not.

“Under the Biosecurity Act, which is about pests and diseases, we had tested the progeny, and there weren’t any diseases of concern,” Department of Agriculture biosecurity unit head Robyn Martin says. “So we couldn’t destroy the progeny, we didn’t have any grounds to do that.”

She says she understands the concern of the pig industry. One West Australian pig farmer told The Australian: “It’s like they put the drug dealers in jail but the drugs are still on the street.”

APL’s Andrae says the pork industry was shocked to discover its closed genetic pool remains breached. “We explored all the legal avenues in this case, but proceeds of crime legislation doesn’t deal with progeny.

“You can destroy drugs, guns and things, but animals are different and no one has the legal ability to depopulate.

“We’re reviewing what happened. We want to ensure this never happens again. If you do the wrong thing, the ramifications are serious and those men went to jail.”

She says the Pinjarra pig scam was the result of “a period of complacency”.

“But there’s been a change, and we need this now to become the new normal,” she says.

“Protecting our animals is just as important as protecting our borders. No one wants a breach of biosecurity on their watch.”