Sev­en­teen Caribbean coun­tries are strength­en­ing their pre­pared­ness for African swine fever, up­dat­ing na­tion­al re­sponse plans aimed at de­tect­ing and con­tain­ing the dis­ease be­fore it threat­ens the re­gion’s pig farms and pork sup­ply.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the coun­tries met in Bar­ba­dos to re­view plans cov­er­ing sur­veil­lance, di­ag­no­sis, trace­abil­i­ty, risk com­mu­ni­ca­tion and emer­gency re­sponse.

The work­shop was held un­der a project led by the Unit­ed States De­part­ment of Agri­cul­ture, with tech­ni­cal co­or­di­na­tion from the In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co­op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture.

The project has sup­port­ed Caribbean vet­eri­nary ser­vices since 2024, help­ing to strength­en their abil­i­ty to de­tect and re­spond to African swine fever.

African swine fever is a high­ly con­ta­gious vi­ral dis­ease af­fect­ing do­mes­tic and wild pigs. It does not in­fect hu­mans, but out­breaks can cause sig­nif­i­cant loss­es to pig farm­ers and dis­rupt pork pro­duc­tion.

Bar­ba­dos Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Shan­tal Munro-Knight said re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion is es­sen­tial to re­duc­ing the risk to farm­ers and food se­cu­ri­ty.

The meet­ing al­so brought to­geth­er vet­eri­nary of­fi­cials to share ex­pe­ri­ence on sur­veil­lance, di­ag­no­sis and co­or­di­nat­ed re­spons­es to sus­pect­ed cas­es.

US­DA of­fi­cial Za­ck­ery Tip­ton said the first hours and weeks af­ter a sus­pect­ed case are crit­i­cal, mak­ing it im­por­tant for coun­tries to have clear and up-to-date re­sponse plans that can be ac­ti­vat­ed im­me­di­ate­ly.

The ini­tia­tive is in­tend­ed to strength­en co­op­er­a­tion among gov­ern­ments, vet­eri­nary ser­vices, pro­duc­ers and in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions across the Caribbean.