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Study id’s US airports with highest risk of ASF entry

A new study finds five U.S. airports with the highest risk of entry of African Swine Fever in smuggled pork products.

National Pork Board’s vice president of science and technology, Dave Pyburn, has the list: “San Jose, California; John F. Kennedy in New York; L.A. airport; George Bush in Houston and the Newark airport in New Jersey. And when you got down to the top two, BY FAR, most of that risk was in Newark and in the George Bush airport in Houston.”

Pyburn says since the outbreaks overseas of ASF in pig populations, the U.S. pork industry has identified the smuggling of infected pork products in luggage as one of the top ways the animal virus could get in the U.S.

“With our limited resources we need to concentrate biosecurity, we need to concentrate inspection and our beagles at these airports with the highest risk.”

Pyburn tells Brownfield the study, funded by the Pork Checkoff and Swine Health Information Center, has been shared with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.