New World screwworm threat: Feral hogs could be disease vectors

Feral hogs continue to be a scourge on U.S. agriculture, causing an estimated $1.6 billion per year in damage, which includes damage to property and crops as well as predation and diseases inflicted on domestic livestock.

As to that last note, it has been estimated that feral hogs inflict about $85 million in losses per year in livestock through predation, disease, veterinary costs and medical treatments. These figures are courtesy of an economic assessment using data released earlier this year from the National Feral Swine Damage Management Program and the National Wildlife Research Center.

Those figures could balloon even more if the population of feral hogs, which are now found in more than 30 states, increases. Feral hogs are known to have reproductive rates that allow populations to double in just four months; thus, their path of destruction expands rather rapidly.

As the U.S. swine industry has turned its attention to the feral hog population as a potential vector of African swine fever as that disease spread across the globe.

The spotlight is once again on feral hogs as the threat of the New World screwworm inches closer to the United States. It is possible that feral hogs can carry the parasite and deliver it to animals that mainly live outdoors, such as horses, cattle and even pasture-raised swine.

-National Institute for Animal Agriculture