Investigation article published in PLoS ONE

April 15^th, 2013

Transboundary animal diseases can have very severe socio-economic impacts when introduced into new regions. The history of disease incursions into the European Union suggests that initial outbreaks were often initiated by illegal importation of meat and derived products. The European Union would benefit from decision-support tools to evaluate the risk of disease introduction caused by illegal imports in order to inform its surveillance strategy. However, due to the difficulty in quantifying illegal movements of animal products, very few studies of this type have been conducted. Using African swine fever as an example, this work presents a novel risk assessment framework for disease introduction into the European Union through illegal importation of meat and products. It uses a semi-quantitative approach based on factors that likely influence the likelihood of release of contaminated smuggled meat and products, and subsequent exposure of the susceptible population. The results suggest that the European Union is at non-negligible risk of African swine fever
introduction through illegal importation of pork and products. On a relative risk scale with six categories from negligible to very high, five European Union countries were estimated at high (France, Germany, Italy and United Kingdom) or moderate (Spain) risk of African swine fever release, five countries were at high risk of exposure if African swine fever were released (France, Italy, Poland, Romania and Spain) and ten countries had a moderate exposure risk (Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Sweden and United Kingdom). The approach presented here and results obtained for African swine fever provide a basis for the enhancement of risk-based surveillance systems and disease prevention programmes in the European Union

Costard S., Jones BA., Martinez-Lopez B., Mur L., de la Torre A., Martinez-Aviles M., Sanchez-Vizcaino F., Sanchez-Vizcaino JM., Pfeiffer DU. and Wieland B.

Introduction of African Swine fever into the European Union through illegal importation of pork and pork products

Introduction of African Swine fever into the European Union through illegal importation of pork and pork products

	Servicio de Inmunología Viral y Medicina Preventiva (SUAT). Centro de Vigilancia Sanitaria Veterinaria (VISAVET). Universidad Complutense (UCM).
	Departamento de Sanidad Animal. Facultad de Veterinaria. Universidad Complutense (UCM).
	Veterinary Epidemiology and Public Health. Royal Veterinary College (RVC).
	Centro de Investigación en Sanidad Animal (CISA). Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.
	Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).
	Centro de Investigación en Sanidad Animal (CISA). Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA).
	Instituto de Investigación en Recursos Cinegéticos (IREC). Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). Universidad de Castilla La Mancha (UCLM). Gobierno de Castilla-La Mancha (JCCM).