On the afternoon of July 15, the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment held a press conference to inform about the direction of African swine fever prevention and control.
According to Mr. Phan Quang Minh, Deputy Director of the Department of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine, from the beginning of 2025 to now, the whole country has had 514 outbreaks in 27 provinces and cities (after the merger). The number of infected pigs is more than 29,642, the number of dead and destroyed pigs is 30,462. Currently, the whole country has 248 outbreaks in 20 provinces and cities (after the merger) in less than 21 days, the number of infected pigs is 19,699, the number of dead and destroyed pigs is 20,280.
African swine fever is on the rise, mainly due to a recurrence of old outbreaks, arising in small-scale livestock farming in households where livestock farming conditions do not ensure biosafety. The risk of the epidemic continuing to arise and spread in the coming time is very high.
The Deputy Director of the Department of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine admitted that through unofficial information channels, reflections from people, media and working groups of the Department of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine, it shows that the situation of disease conce entry and failure to report on the system is common, causing the spread of the disease and seriously challenging the work of preventing and controlling African swine fever.
"Some localities that detect outbreaks do not detect outbreaks in a timely manner, hide them, and take action to handle outbreaks when they have spread widely. The situation of hiding the African swine fever epidemic manifested in many forms such as street vending, illegal slaughter, internal consumption, littering, untrue reporting, lack of proactive inspection from authorities..., mainly due to the fear of economic damage and lack of confidence in support policies", Mr. Minh informed.
According to Mr. Minh, in reality, the Department has not received any reports on any cases of being punished for littering the environment, which shows that although there are sanctions, they are not enough to deter and many localities have not yet applied this sanction.
Regarding regulations on policies to support and overcome animal diseases, the Department of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine said that in addition to low support prices, procedures and support time for livestock farmers are still slow: "There are cases where it has to be quarterly, annually, or even more. During such a process, livestock farmers do not have capital to produce, so there is a mentality of selling to get rid of capital".
In the face of the tense epidemic situation, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Environment Phung Duc Tien directed the Department of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine to be more closely and drastically in directing disease prevention and control. According to the Deputy Minister, the departments of veterinary medicine of the provinces must be responsible for the situation of disease prevention, disease control, and vaccination rates.
