The disease has recently been confirmed in East Timor and the Philippines and there is an expectation Indonesia will soon follow.
“It is alarmingly close,” NZ Pork manager David Baines said.
There are estimates a quarter of the world’s pigs have been culled or died, with 200 million killed in China alone.
NZ Pork has been working with the Ministry for Primary Industries to tighten biosecurity and Baines says it has issued new promotional material to alert visitors and is asking extra border questions of tourists and returning citizens.
They include questions about whether they have visited a piggery and, if so, what they have done with clothes and footwear.
The most likely route for the fever to arrive in NZ is with travellers because imported pig meat is screened, Baines said.
Many pig farm workers come from the Philippines and some farm owners are requiring any staff returning from their home countries to have a period in quarantine in case they have been exposed to the disease.
In Australia pig farmers are forbidding pork to be eaten on their farms and farmers of outdoor piggeries are becoming increasingly vigilant with loitering wild pigs.
The NZ industry is also urging vigilance by non-commercial piggeries who feed their food scraps, that might include meat, to their stock.
Baines says if meat is to be fed then, as per MPI recommendations, it should be cooked for one hour at 100C.
“There is no cure for ASF and no vaccine.
“The only response is to eradicate infected herds.
“If a pig farmer contracts the disease then it’s game over.”
There are 95 commercial pig farmers in NZ but another estimated 8000 to 10,000 non commercial premises that house at least one pig a year, predominantly on farms and lifestyle blocks.
The commercial pig population is estimated at 660,000 which supplies about 40% of NZ’s annual demand for pig meat.
The balance, about 50 million kg, is imported from 25 countries.
In 2017-18 each New Zealander ate 23kg of pork, an increase of 2kg on the previous year.
Attention is now focused on whether AFS will reach Papua New Guinea, which has limited biosecurity resources, a large wild pig population and is close to Australia.
The Australian Government has banned imports of pig products from infected countries and in the eight months to September confiscated 27 tonnes of pork products at Australian airports alone.
Extra sniffer dogs have been sent to Darwin and border security tightened at airports with a focus on flights arriving from infected countries.
Australia’s domestic pork industry is worth NZ$5.3 billion with 2.5 million pigs farmed and 36,000 people employed.
Australia imports about 80% of the pork consumed.
