Officials said there is an active watch on several animal diseases in the Commonwealth. The office of the State Veterinarian Preparedness and Response is the primary agency for detection response and mitigation for regulatory and foreign animal diseases.
Dr. Steve Velasco is the State Veterinarian and Executive Director of the office. He said an emerging problem is African Swine Fever.
“The real problem with this disease is processed foods from these animals can contain virulent virus or still live virus in products that are brought in. So, with immigration or other means it’s potential to get this disease into a naïve population and it would spread like wildfire,” Velasco said.
The state vet added the disease is currently in the Dominican Republic very close to the U.S. territory, Puerto Rico, where a protection zone has been established to survey imports and exports.
In 2022 the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza or bird flu affected three million birds in Kentucky. The incursion was successfully mitigated at the time, but officials said the virus has been found again in wildlife recently.
Velasco said bird flu has also been shown to affect dairy cattle.
“There are 17 states that have been affected at one point with this in their dairy cattle. There was an 18th state that was affected by it was not in dairy cattle, that was a swine and that was the state of Oregon,” said Velasco.
Velasco added since the initial outbreak a national milk testing strategy to spot the virus was developed by the USDA. He said Kentucky has tested clean and continues to at this time.
Lastly, the State Vet mentioned New World screwworm, a larva that plants itself in warm flesh animals and eats them from the inside out. He said the closest reported case was in Mexico, but just recently there was a case discovered in Maryland, the first in the United States.
More information on animal disease in Kentucky is available at kyagr.com/statevet.