African Swine Fever (ASF) Surveillance and Sampling Course

About the course

This free course has been created by the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF) to provide anyone who interacts with domestic or feral pigs with information on disease surveillance and diagnostic sampling to help protect Australia from the threat of ASF.  

It provides information about how you can help in the early detection and response to ASF should it enter Australia and infect pigs. Effective surveillance and sampling of domestic and feral pig populations will support ASF early detection and response efforts, so the potential impacts of an outbreak can be minimised.

The training has been developed by the Queensland DAF but most of the information is applicable Australia-wide. Throughout the course, links are provided to additional resources and online videos to assist your learning.

Registered veterinarians who complete modules within the course are eligible to claim 1 VetEd continuing professional development (CPD) for each hour of learning.

What you’ll learn

The first three modules provide foundational information on surveillance and sampling of pigs and are relevant to anyone who owns or interacts with pigs (including feral pigs).

Module 4 provides information on swab and blood sample collection from live pigs and is relevant to pig industry workers, veterinarians and government animal biosecurity officers.

Module 5 provides guidance on how to undertake a post-mortem examination and collect samples for ASF disease exclusion testing. This is relevant to veterinarians, para-veterinarians, pathologists and other specially trained people including some stock people and animal biosecurity officers.

Module 6 provides information on sample submission and transport, which is relevant to veterinarians and government biosecurity officers who submit samples for laboratory analysis.

This course takes approximately 2.5 hours to complete.

Course content

This course provides an overview of surveillance fundamentals and important information about how to safely and effectively collect and submit samples for ASF diagnostic testing. Completing the course will enhance your capacity to contribute to surveillance activities for early detection and response to serious pig diseases such as ASF.

The ASF surveillance and sampling course includes the following modules:

• Module 1 – Surveillance and sampling fundamentals (15 mins)
• Module 2 – Health and safety for ASF sample collection (30 mins)
• Module 3 – Preparing for ASF sample collection (15 mins)
• Module 4 – ASF sample collection from live pigs (30 mins)
• Module 5 – Pig post-mortem examination and ASF sample collection (40 mins)
• Module 6 – ASF sample submission and transport (20 mins).

This course enables you to explore different topics, depending on your learning needs. However, Modules 1, 2 and 3 provide valuable foundational information and must be completed (in order) before accessing Modules 4, 5 or 6. You will receive a certificate of completion for each module you complete.

This training has been developed by Queensland DAF, but most of the information is applicable Australia-wide. Links are provided to additional resources and online videos throughout the course to assist your learning.

Enrolment

To access this training, you will need to log in to the Biosecurity Online Training (BOLT) learning management platform. Access is free and available to anyone with an interest in biosecurity. If you are not already a member, then you will need to register and create a new account.

For help with BOLT, please contact [email protected].

Funding acknowledgement

This training has been developed by Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries.