Australia estimates that ASF could cost $2.5 billion to enter the country

Potential costs for this key threat to enter Australia include the cost of eradication, the cost to the industry until the disease is eradicated, and the long-term cost of the presence of ASF if eradication is not economically or technically feasible. These estimates provide insight into the value of preventing ASF from entering Australia. If invasion occurs in the future, endemic costs can be used to estimate the costs and benefits of eradication decisions.

Key Findings:

The cost of a small ASF outbreak in domestic pigs and eradication of the disease is estimated at $117-263 million.

A small outbreak of ASF in feral pigs, followed by eradication, is estimated at $101-127 million.

The cost of endemic ASF is estimated at about $0.4–2.5 billion.

Certain aspects of the Australian swine industry are likely to affect the costs associated with disease and response to virus entry. These include:

No redundancy – any delay in moving pigs will result in farms holding more pigs than they can accommodate, leading to animal welfare issues.

Few slaughterhouses, mostly operating at full capacity – any reduction in capacity could result in long distance interstate migration of hogs (if capacity, logistics and welfare considerations permit) or accumulation of ready-to-slaughter pigs on the farm, detrimental to animal welfare.

Interstate Movements - Restrictions on movement between jurisdictions during disease control will cause severe disruption to the normal flow of pigs in the system.

Most by-products are exported – since there is almost no domestic market for by-products, the surplus will need to be disposed of, causing slaughterhouses to lose income from the sale of by-products and incur disposal costs – this loss of profitability is likely to result in higher slaughter fees.

A small number of producers own most of the herd – there are many small businesses that tend to have weaker biosecurity measures on farms (Schembri et al. 2015).