Model for the “police call” This is how swine fever rages in the East
By Julian Vetten March 24, 2024, 9:51 p.m. Listen to article
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Almost 100% mortality, draconian government measures in the event of an outbreak and a new fence designed to prevent border crossings: ASF is the blueprint for a real nightmare.
There is a scene in “Pigs” that should hit every farmer to the core and is difficult to digest even for uninvolved spectators: A van drives along narrow country roads to a farm, figures in white protective clothing get out and enter one of the buildings. It’s obviously the stable, because while there’s nothing to see, you hear more than you’d like: the multi-voiced death cries of pigs that just passed through the camera alive and healthy – and are now being culled for safety reasons.
ASF outbreaks have serious consequences for affected farmers.
(Photo: rbb / Christoph Assmann)
The new Brandenburg “Polizeiruf” is about the murder of a Berlin lawyer and his rather unsavory gang of colleagues who spend their free time drinking and hunting in Polish forests. At least as a hook, because the actual protagonist of the film is African swine fever (ASF), which has been rampant in the German-Polish border area for several years: The virus is highly contagious and affects domestic and wild pigs and causes almost 100% mortality among its victims. The disease itself is harmless to humans, but its spread can have devastating economic consequences, especially for farmers and businesses that rely on pig farming.
“Fear is spreading”
The unprecedented mortality rate of the virus, first diagnosed in Georgia in 2007, is one of the reasons for the draconian measures that come into force in the event of an ASF outbreak: all domestic pigs within a three-kilometer radius are killed by order of the veterinary authority, even if they are not sick are – in many cases expanded by a buffer zone up to seven kilometers wide. “Tens of thousands of culled pigs, empty stables and destroyed livelihoods on both sides of the border,” says “Polizeiruf” director Tomasz E. Rudzik, summarizing the impact on the residents of affected areas.
The film shows how great the emotional burden is. Rudzik: “Fear is spreading, mistrust is growing towards strangers who, out of ignorance and lack of knowledge, do not adhere to the state protective measures and thereby spread the virus. But old resentments are also popping up again, and mutual blame is putting a strain on the relationship with the Poles. The danger is once again coming from the East.”
To contain the disease, a 450 kilometer long protective fence was installed on the German side in 2020 to prevent infected wild boars from crossing the border into Germany. Falling case numbers over the past year suggest the measure is temporarily successful, but the fence “also symbolizes a new frontier, at least in people’s minds,” Rudzik said. Especially since there were also cases in northern Italy and Sweden in 2023 and the virus is now circulating in 20 EU countries – and in the end there is once again the sobering realization: viruses do not adhere to man-made borders.