“My message was very straightforward,” said Ilia Zubtsov. “When I was preparing for this presentation, I wanted to answer the question, ‘Is life with African swine fever possible or not?’ I displayed several statistics and how Russian pork production grew with African swine fever virus from 2007 to 2019. So, the answer to the question is yes, absolutely. But you also have to create change, and I introduced several changes that we made in the industry, both from the pork production standpoint and the government support standpoint.”

To prevent the spread of African Swine Fever, Russia had to make biosecurity a priority. There are two major components to the biosecurity changes Russia made. The first change is that PIC realized they had to do everything they could to protect their farm. They had to change some biosecurity policies and procedures. They also started to train and increase the awareness of the people. In 2016, PIC also implemented compartmentalization and regionalization of biosecurity. Essentially, they had the map of Russia with all the infected areas and clean areas and gray areas, and they controlled transportation of people and products so the clean areas did not get infected.

“We understand that the all-people factor is the major risk of bringing the virus onto the farm,” said Ilia Zubtsov. “The big change that we made was how people enter the farm. It's all about the downtimes, it's about how people enter the farm and the procedures that they have to follow to enter the farm. We have guards who have security on the farm. The security is not always part of the same company, so they will control the people. The concern is about how people and materials and anything else gets into the farm. The main goal of biosecurity is to prevent anything new from entering the farm.”

It’s even important that catering and food being brought onto the farm is controlled. Catering has become a controlled process and pork production companies will typically hire a special canteen. That canteen will only cook food for that particular farm. They won’t cook food for anybody else. The food is then brought to the farm every day and there are special procedures they have to follow to keep the farm safe. The food is tracked in and out to maintain biosecurity. The people on the farm get together in the canteen to eat so people don’t bring any food to the farm with them.

“The companies will also provide workers with transportation,” said Ilia Zubtsov. “They have buses that go around the villages and pick people up from the designated areas and then bring people to the farm. This is very important from a biosecurity standpoint because there’s a greater risk when you have vehicles constantly coming in and out of the farm.”

PIC in Russia has educated other countries in the industry about important measures that can be taken for biosecurity, PIC is a global company that has offices in Asia. They had workers from PIC Russia go to the Philippines and China and train people at the farm level. They also had their workers participate in the panel discussions. When PIC Russia visits Philippine farms or Chinese farms, they also learn from them. It’s cross learning, and in the modern pork world, there are no boundaries or borders. African swine fever is a terrible thing for the whole world so it’s important that the industry sticks together to combat the disease.

“You have people traveling around the world and sometimes people are not educated,” said Ilia Zubtsov. “They don't know that they cannot bring any products and it's up to us to educate them, to talk to them, and to be open and say it's important.”