Abstract:

African swine fever (ASF) is an infectious disease caused by a specific virus [1, 5, 11, 18, 19] and is one of the most expensive swine diseases [12, 14]. The economic importance of the disease lies in the losses due to the resulted mortality on the affected farms, in the losses caused by the costs of surveillance and control and last but not least, by the costs incurred for the disease diagnosis [3, 25, 26]. Due to the economic importance in all countries where the disease was diagnosed, veterinary sanitary measures were applied in order to prevent and combat this disease. Despite drastic measures, the disease still persists in some European countries, especially in Eastern Europe. Taking into account the real and potential danger of ASF, surveillance and control programs are coordinated by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE - International Office for Epizootics) [31] and the veterinary health services of the European Union level [28]. In this context, in Romania, since the beginning of reporting the first outbreaks of disease, normative acts have been issued, which regulate the activity of surveillance and control, as well as the methodology of official diagnosis.