 Dr. Renee, just send you the new background and please check it out. I know, I know. Everyone, I'm Renee Willis. I work with the ASF team here at the FAO Regional Office. Before we begin today's webinar, I'd just like to invite you all to use the Zoom chat function throughout the talks if you want to make some comments. But if you have some questions for the speakers, you can put those in the Q&A box. And we'll also be monitoring the chat function for people who are joining on the YouTube live stream. So as we approach midday, I'd just like to hand the floor over to Philip Glass. So I'll just hold for a few minutes and when we go to midday, I'll introduce Philip. Thank you. We still have two minutes, right? So we can wait a little bit. We can see colleagues are joining to this webinar. Please give us another one minute to start the webinar soon. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you, everybody. I'd like to hand the floor to Philip Glass. Philip is the Officer in Charge for FAO's Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases. Philip will give today's opening remarks for the webinar on African Swine Fever Management for Small Holders. Thank you, Philip. Thank you, René, and thank you for already introducing the long name, so I can just say Ek-Tat instead of the whole long list. So I would like to welcome all of you on behalf of Ek-Tat and on behalf of Qashen Bonsata Ponchi, our regional manager who is traveling at the moment, so I'm filling in for him. So I really would like to welcome you all on today's webinar on African Swine Fever Management for Small Holders. I would really like to thank, of course, USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance or BHA of the United States of America for their support in paying for this webinar and for making this all happening. I also really would like to thank our Virtual Learning Centre here in Ek-Tatrap for running this webinar very professionally. And I think this webinar will really provide you with a nice overview of how we as FAO try to work to support small holders and for ASF control, biosecurity measures, etc., and how this information can give you some useful overviews for all the training resources and methods that are currently available in spite of any ASF vaccination for now. So I think first, UNI, our regional coordinator for African Swine Fever, will talk about all the FAO's regional efforts to control ASF. Then I see that Professor Dirk Pfeiffer is here, so I see he survived his trips to Geelong and Singapore. Happy to see you virtually again, Dirk. So I know Dirk, as an expert, he will talk about the development of the guidelines for ASF prevention and control in small holder pig farming in Asia with all the support from his team at the city university of Hong Kong. And then last but not least, I see that Caroline is also here from PhilVat, who will present some of the details of the work that her organization, PhilVat Animal Health Services, has done and is doing in terms of the practical utilization of these guidelines. So they develop training materials with us and work on the implementation of community approaches to increase resilience of small holder farms against ASF incursions. So having said that, I won't take too much of your time. I hope it will be a very enjoyable webinar. Please don't hesitate to put your questions in the chat. There is no stupid questions, only stupid answers. That's what people told me. So don't be shy. Have a very interactive session and I wish you all a very good morning or afternoon or evening wherever you are connecting in this world. And with this, I will hand it back over to uni. Back to you. Thanks a lot, Phillip, for one welcoming remark and also introducing all the speakers. Welcome you all to come into this webinar today. My name is Uni O and I'm coordinating ASF program for our region. This time, I will give you shortly on the efforts from our region to control ASF. Oh, my clicker is not working. Sorry for that. Okay. So ASF, as you already know, ASF is not easy to differentiate from other swine diseases. And the virus itself is quite stable and resistant. So it survives long time in the environment and all. And there is no effective treatment nor vaccine and it's not really causing disease for humans. So it has not food safety concern, but we still need to think about the food security for ASF. Africa swine fever is affecting all pigs, the massive wild. But since it traveled a long way to Europe, Asia, and now in America, so the disease is not any more African disease. It spreads to everywhere. In our region, as of now, total 17 countries officially reported ASF, very recent case in Thailand and Nepal. And from FAS side, we are updating ASF situation every other week. And you can just check on our website on the latest ASF situation in Asia in the Pacific. So for the coming to the regional effort to fight ASF, we developed this ASF regional collaborative framework for our region together with OAH and our member states. The main objective is to prevent the spread of ASF and also mitigate the impact of ASF in our region. We have five PLA and two cross cutting issues and through the research, we should understand better of ASF. And through the risk assessment and risk mitigation measure, we need to find effective approach for ASF prevention and control. And since our region is becoming ending, turning into an endemic situation for ASF, we also need to consider business continuity and recovery. And through the proper regulatory framework, we need to strengthen the policy and also risk communication and awareness material is very important for, especially for ASF. We also need to develop required capacity from technical and operational both aspects. And also we need to enhance collaboration and coordination at multi-sectoral, multilateral and multidisciplinary way. Then our region under the regional GFTAD Global Framework for Transparency Transboundary Animal Diseases under this PLA, we conducted series of regional consultation and also we established standing global expert in April 2019. And we continue to have SGE meeting even under the pandemic situation. Soon we are going to resume our SGE meeting from early next year. We also conducted some depth analysis from our member states. And nonetheless to say that most constraint faced by member countries were biosecurity, especially in smallholder peak farms. So we tried to find this way to support our smallholders. Our region is producing more than 60% of global domestic peak population. And most of them are in a lower biosecurity system. And by the household number 80 to 90% are smallholders in the Southeast Asian countries and still illegal movement is happening across the border. We are still at risk for ASF spread. So FLO we are taking multidimensional approach to combat ASF by improving preparedness and response by veterinary authorities and strengthening this communication, analyzing the value chain, engaging private sector, assessing the economic impact and building capacity for lab diagnosis and engaging community for this work. So far we provided members of trainings and we also developed guidelines and we conducted small studies and also we developed some of the communication materials. We conducted series of training at the regional level as well as in country level. We could train some number of more than 850 veterinary officers in country level. And now we are moving to us to support target community and community animal health workers. So this work to support the smallholders. We also came up with this conceptual framework to support peak smallholders. We need good management practice through the practical guidelines and then improve ownership using governance and incentive management and early warning by detecting early communication and awareness and education and also engaging private sector. Especially for this ownership and early warning, we need to utilize community animal health workers and also the local authorities such as Village Head. So in line with that framework, we developed guidelines to support smallholders, together with Professor Doug Pfeiffer School. All of these guidelines are available online and together with Fieldbed, we also further developed training materials to utilize at the community level. You will hear more from Professor Doug Pfeiffer and also Dr. Caroline Benigno after my talk. So the concept of approaching our community engagement program, we have now these practical guidelines covering preparedness response and recovery. Then conducting series of training at the field level, including awareness campaign, then identifying champion farmers and select community to conduct high level of interventions at the community level. Then the intervention should be consultative and participatory by the participating community or funds. Then we will do some change of practice and also the infrastructure then really conduct impact assessment and scaling up. This is planned for the next three years in our program for some selective countries. We also developed numbers of awareness material. First one was the Be A Champion Farmer animation video. You can visit our YouTube and check this video. This video is also available in multiple languages and also using the infographics in this video. We also created farm biosecurity poster also in multiple languages. And furthermore, we developed more e-cars targeting different groups. This one we already finished, but we are soon releasing them one by one with our social media. Then we have more posters developed on what is ASL, Q&A kind of one and also guidelines on biosecurity. And also differential diagnosis for African swine fever for animal veterinary officers. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you. Over to you, Renee. Thank you, uni. Thank you for that overview. I'll just ask you to turn the speaker off. Thank you. I'll hand over to Dirk now. He's going to share his talk. Welcome, Dirk. Thank you. Can you hear me? Can you see my slide? Yes, thank you. That's showing well. Zoom is complaining. Are we okay? Yes. Okay, there we go. You can see my slide. You can hear me. Yes, thanks, Dirk. You're good to go. Sorry for the glitch. We've been playing around too much with backgrounds and Zoom didn't like that. Okay, now, I mean, it's my thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to introduce the guidelines that we've developed for African swine fever prevention and control in small holder pig farming in Asia. And what I would like to do is start with a little bit of a background of the context because I think that is really important. Consider when trying to appreciate the complexity of the challenge that we have in dealing with African swine fever in these systems. So if I'll go briefly through the value chain for pork food systems that is of relevance in the region. We often, when we think about value chains or food production or pig production, I should say we think about the farms primarily, but one has to be or understand that they actually are various inputs to these systems, which may also influence the maintenance of the virus in the system. And maybe it may be meat or it may be the pig genetics that may be maybe feed it may be imports of animals. So then we've got a whole range of different types of farms and what we are from large integrated farms down to small farms and what with our guidelines we are focusing in particular on the small farms small farms in small holder farms. But then the connection between those farms and the consumer is rather complex and I don't want to go through that in detail, but I think it is important to just show how many steps they are involved. And it doesn't stop there with the consumer they also other mechanisms running in parallel. So for example, what is happening questions what's happening to the dead pigs that are being collected, the food waste, and how that might find its way back to the farms where the virus is able to move through that system, and thereby create a very challenging or very challenging situation to deal with. Few pictures of the types of farms that that we are talking about and these are just some examples. And uni mentioned before that in some parts of the region there's still picks will be fed or food waste and one might argue that that's a very effective way of utilizing any waste used by restaurants etc. So what we actually domesticated pigs for originally but the African swine fever virus is very well capable of surviving is such waste and thereby this bear this this habit of feeding food waste has been an important mechanism of maintaining the disease in various food systems in the region and beyond. Another aspect is the transport and that's another mechanism of connecting between farms and slaughterhouses, but also just between farms in terms of trucks going from farm to farm and thereby potentially taking virus costs and they can they can take different types of transport more advanced maybe more by secure types and very small scale and therefore more risky types of transport and then they have the slaughterhouses and the transport of the meat and finally the retailing of the pork. So all this virus all those parts of the food system play a role for spreading transmission and what I'm trying to do is with this then is we when we think about how it can be best managed the disease which is what we've been trying to reflect in the guidelines. Is to address the different pathways that are relevant for introduction of African swine fever to pick farms. So one is the contact with the neighboring farms so various mechanisms as depicted here. The other one is wire slaughterhouse and movement of trucks back and forth. The other one is through the, the, the retailing and the processing. And there's also illegal activities potentially even to end the role of wild war, which which may also present a factor for introduction of the And finally, there's introduction of movement of pigs live pigs or pork between countries. So even I mean that already shows how many dimensions this question has and when we then come down to the smaller farm, which is the. Yeah, I mean I realize the challenge and we need tailored and realistic and sustainable approaches that have to be taken by local stakeholders into the local context and communicated to two farmers, such that we can make a difference in terms of what we want to where we want to go with this virus whether we want to eradicate it or whether there may be a need to accept endemicity in different parts of the region. So that that is basically, I guess the context within which these four documents have been developed and there is a logical sequence amongst them and now we go through them. And each of them one by one very briefly, I mean I can't do really more in this presentation. The, what I would like to do before I continue is just recognize the contributions of the different authors so the people mentioned on including the, our colleagues from FAO who worked with us on these guidelines have done a tremendous job and I mean in fact a very challenging job to put these documents together. And I'll start off with the first one which is I mean with with mode with all of these diseases and we need to have these guidelines of effectively, effectively detecting them and we felt it would be useful provided or provided document develop a document that looks at this challenge form a small hold of perspective and that goes down goes through this theory that the the the principles of surveillance can come up with the objectives what what are we what situation are we in is Africans white people virus actually present or is it absent and because that will actually result in quite different surveillance approaches that I need we've, we are discussing and recommending ways in relation to how active and passive surveillance can be optimized and obviously with with most infectious diseases passive surveillance is usually most important. And I think that I mean being realistic about what can actually be achieved and and that is usually synthesized in terms of the sensitivity that these systems and timeliness that these systems surveillance systems can provide in terms of the ability to report or detect the disease, which is more important when the disease has been absent and may have been introduced. There are also questions of case definitions and you need showed some nice infographics which are being used in the region to communicate to stakeholders, what they should be looking for. And that is providing. Yeah, I'm making the situation more difficult is the emergence of low pathogenesis strains and we've actually are we out of working at the moment on a revision of that surveillance document which will take account of that in you situation. I don't want to go through this in detail I mean we've we've been trying to make them easy to use, and by having a graphical flow charts that allow the users to go through the different steps of the process that they have to. And where they have to make decisions in relation to the design of the surveillance system which makes it hopefully also more transparent to any other stakeholders. The second document is about I guess once one has detected the disease, what is to be done and some key questions to be addressed in your terms of what still the most important method to deal for dealing with this disease the standard methods is culling. And there are some various issues associated with that and, and one important one is also the disposal of the carcasses and, and then what to do in terms of cleansing and disinfection and for how long to destock or when can the farming will be populated. This, I would say that this section in particular needs to be reviewed on a regular basis because there are alternatives to culling being used I mean large scale culling and one of them is selective culling. We're only parts of the farm that have been tested positive or where the disease has been found are culled and, but we need to have the scientific evidence in terms of from independent studies how well that is working. It's a question of wild boar what to do wild wild boar and the also the engagement with the private sector, but this is a quite a contentious issue particularly with small scale farmers when large scale culling is being conducted. Obviously, there's usually compensation, but it's very difficult for farmers to then get back into business and to to maintain their lobbyists. Again, this is supported by a flow diagram and hopefully hopefully making it easier for users to go through the complexity of this document. Now, the third document I would maybe this is the most important document document as Eunice said that the most important aspect is really farm farm by security. And, and this is where what is the main emphasis of this document although it also looks at slaughtering and restocking. We're trying to make practical recommendations in relation to best buy security management practices. And, and also what can be done during movement in terms of how the risk of a spread can be kept and at a minimum. And I think it's also important to emphasize to the farmers that improvement or buy security should also reduce the risk of introduction of pathogens other than African spina fever and those pathogens are likely to be those which will adversely affect productivity of the pigs so the aim is really to address this or incentivize farmers on the basis of arguments for improved productivity and therefore economic benefits also for the farmer. And again, that's supported by diagrams describing the different aspects of the decisions that have to be made when improving by security on the farms. The last of the four documents is a very ambitious one and it's thinking about the way forward and we really were developed this clean chain approach on the basis of the combat mentalization and concept where we've written some guidelines for the for war. Which isn't those guidelines are not really appropriate for small scale farmers so here we've tried to develop something that we hope will be useful for farmers in areas where there's endemic infection and where one can provide them with the mechanisms. So they can maintain or continue production and supply of pigs, even if there's an outbreak in the surrounding area. This will, this is as compartmentalization would have to be based on a strong public private partnership, it would have to rely on the use of risk based tools. And also the, the, as mentioned at the bottom in here, and it's the public private partnership and local stakeholders and we will really have an agreement and have worked for the same goal and to make this a successful exercise. And again, there's a diagram that guides through the document. As a, just have some, some final comments. And we, we've been looking at this virus for a long time now I'm in for and for quite some time, a number of years also in in Asia, and we realized that it's, we haven't really got the others, not an end in sight we whether we have to live with the virus and that's being debated is is an issue. And vaccines, as uni said at the beginning there are no vaccines I mean there are some prospects and what I would have to be cautious there. So we are going to support the small holders who, who the large farms are in a way they can establish proper by security protocols etc they have their ways of protecting their farms from the virus. But it's much harder for small owners and that's where our guidelines are aiming for that target goal. And the key will be for them to improve by security and as I mentioned it's not just we how do we incentivize how do you communicate we communicate that and to me it's about the generic benefits for productivity. And our hope is that the people will try the idea of clean chains and as part of production cooperatives together with government veterinary services and to to enhance the economic benefits also. And finally I emphasize that these dog outlands are living documents because this and yet they really they require feedback also from the field, and because some of it may, may have to be adapted not some of it probably a lot of it may have to be adapted to new knowledge but also the experience in terms of things that haven't worked in the field and we, we look forward to having that information and then we'll work together with FA or on a revision of those documents. My final slide I just wanted to this is I think this Chinese character here actually is just brings back to the importance of pigs you know the peak as far the character for house is part of the house in there. So pigs are important in this in this region here. And I think we should keep that in mind. Thank you very much. Uni or any. Thank you. Thank you for that talk. We can certainly get an appreciation for how much works gone into the process of putting together the guidelines. So actually the process is still ongoing like you say living documents. Our next speaker Caroline's going to talk about her work with company feel that animal health services. She's been adapting the, the information within the guidelines to training programs and passing on knowledge to small holder communities. I've just ordered her her speech she's not quite trusting of the internet. So I'll just pass the floor to Caroline and then load her slides when she's ready. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Renee. Good afternoon to all. I'm glad I did the recording because there's a heavy thunderstorm where I am right now and I might be cut off so I'm ready. You may show the percent the recording thank you. We're willing to participate ups. You should start from the very beginning. Thank you. Good day everyone. Let me show you now how the sky. Sorry for the technical glitch we will resume this video again. It will run on its own. No need to click. Now how these guidelines were adapted on the ground. We implemented three activities where the guidelines were carefully and applied to be. First, the development of guidelines into applied training courses. From the guidelines, a training workbook was developed and used in the conduct of training in countries like Papua New Guinea Cambodia and the Philippines. The training workbook had one scenario where the provincial. So the sound was quite low so we will adjust the sound again and play again. Sorry for this. Good day everyone. Let me show you now how these guidelines were adapted on the ground. We implemented three activities where the guidelines were carefully explained and applied to big husbandry in a small holder setting. First, the development of guidelines into applied training courses. From the guidelines, a training workbook was developed and used in the conduct of training in countries like Papua New Guinea Cambodia and the Philippines. The training workbook had one scenario where the provincial veterinarian had to deal with an ASF incursion. Since our participants came from remote areas of the countries where internet signal is not consistent, a virtual classroom was created where the participants can log in whenever they get good internet signals. The workbook can be accessed and they can answer or even post questions to which the facilitator can reply to them in the classroom. Participants found this approach very manageable and gave them time to think over the scenarios and the questions posed at them. Eventually, the training has been transformed into training modules for a VLC course. Second is the demonstration of proper cleaning and disinfection. From the guidelines, cleaning and disinfection had a lengthy discussion on the topic. So we developed an illustration and the steps to cleaning and disinfection. And for small holders to better appreciate how this is done, a video demonstration of cleaning and disinfection was developed with real-life cleaning and disinfection activities. The third is the Community ASF Biosecurity Intervention, or CABI. CABI is a five-month project where the community agreed to put in place a set of biosecurity interventions. There was a project implementation team to oversee the interventions. The objectives were to strengthen the practices since wine racing, determine knowledge of the small holders on ASF, and assess the economic costs and impact of the interventions. It was a five-month project that commenced in February of this year. We decided and report recipient selection to turning over biosecurity materials, monitoring the activity, and gathering data for analysis. The site was in a village in North Cotabato where pig racing is a major contributor of the farmer's livelihoods. And members were willing to participate and the area has been ASF-free. Some of the pictures when farmers were being briefed on the CABI, so there was a biosecurity orientation, inspection of buckered farms, and data collection on management practices. The agreed intervention was a set of biosecurity measures that the farmers will put in place. And these are fencing made of local materials, hand-washing station, foot baths with disinfectants, and cleaning and disinfection materials. A proper turnover of materials signaled the commencement of the activity. And then constant monitoring was done for the next three months. Then on the fifth month, data and practices and economics were gathered and analyzed. And on the last month, a biosecurity booklet was developed and left with the farmer to foster a habit of recording. So the results and discussion, there were 20 participants, 11 males and 9 females. In terms of general management practices, questions on inspection of pigs, separating sick pigs, cleaning and disinfection, consulting animal health workers, reporting of unusual disease mortalities were posed to them before and after the implementation phase. And the observations were that cleaning and disinfection was commonly practiced by the farmers. However, they mentioned that they only cleaned their pigs but did not know this infection. The study noted a significant increase in the number of farmers who are now concerned on reporting unusual pig mortalities to authorities. Farmers are also now informed that separating sick pigs are important to prevent disease spread. On biosecurity practices, there was a notable change in the practices in terms of washing hands, changing clothes when attending to pigs. And since the farmers were provided with biosecurity paraphernalia, the farmers are now practicing proper measures to prevent disease spread. And these are changing clothes, changing and disinfecting boots at the pig entrance, prohibiting unauthorized people to enter the farm, disinfecting vehicles during entry to the farm, and designating separate offload sites when selling pigs. In terms of swine trading, again, these are the recorded changes in terms of their practices towards purchasing and selling pigs. Most farmers have now improved in terms of inquiring about the history of the animals before buying, isolating new arrival of pigs, monitoring the pig health status and keeping health records, as well as prohibiting buyers, traders, or traders inside the farm. On awareness and on awareness on ASF and biosecurity, the farmers appreciated the regular monitoring activities and technical discussions with the project team as they are now more knowledgeable on how they can improve their biosecurity practice. In terms of knowledge assessment on ASF and biosecurity, there was marked improvement on the knowledge levels of the farmers on ASF and biosecurity after the project. In terms of investments and Kavi, the total investment for each farmer amounted to USD 370, while this seems to be a big amount for a farmer, it should be foreseen as an investment to protect the farms from any potential disease spread. It must be noted that there was an ASF outbreak that happened in a nearby village, but this pilot village was not affected with ASF because of biosecurity measures implemented. So these are some of the pictures before and after the interventions were put in place. So this example of the fencing made of local materials, the foot bath, which were built by the farmers, another example of fencing in foot bath. So in summary and conclusion, increasing efforts to improve awareness on ASF and biosecurity practices is very important to instill among swine racers. Second, community involvement where village officials have a vital role in stewarding biosecurity showed promising results in this study. Third, along with awareness, provision of support will allow the farmers to implement biosecurity practices. And lastly is that investment by government towards improvement of biosecurity measures is more cost efficient than to pay compensation to each ASF affected farmer. So with that, thank you very much and like to acknowledge the funding support from USAID and FAO and our partners in the field. Thank you. Thank you Caroline. Thank you for recording that session. Sorry about the glitches there at the start. Thank you Renee. It's great to see the information that's being prepared actually filtering down and affecting change in the field. So we've actually got a presentation that our intern here at FAO Rapp has put together. She's taken some of the materials from the Virtual Learning Centre course on ASF. This course will be released in the very near future. We were hoping to have it online for today, but we should get there very soon. So thanks Ojin for putting this together and Emmy if you can share that talk. Thank you. It's great. Thank you Ojin. So we have a few more minutes left and there's one question in the Q&A section. It's quite a long one so I'll read it out and invite the panel speakers to put their inputs in. So the ASF situation and dynamics in the region are still unclear and the endemic situation of ASF in the region continues to threaten pig production. What are the barriers and solutions to encouraging small holders to engage the surveillance and reporting? Without real-time ASF reports and warning, implementation of cabbie risk-based surveillance and monitoring, etc. It looks like we're in for a long marathon without knowing when to rest, stop or run faster. How to cope with the fatigue and frustration of those small holders or community biosecurity practices, particularly when pig production is losing money. Wow. Who'd like to step in and have a go with that one? You want to give it a go, Caroline, but I can also. Let me start. I mean, this is a problem and we've had lots of meetings and we've been thinking about also recently in Geelong, this came up again. In terms of also the way how we look at this disease, how we're going to deal with it and the issue of culling in situations where we have outbreaks of African swine fever and then the traditional government response has been to cull the affected farm but also neighboring farms, etc. And then the question is how much compensation can you pay? So I think we need to reflect on how we deal with what are realistically endemic situations so that we can protect farmers livelihoods and not. There's a little bit of a danger that people will now start to think the vaccines will come and then they do not have to change the ways how they run their businesses. Part of it is as uni has said earlier, improvement of biosecurity is essential. They won't get around that and it's not just a benefit for African swine fever. There'll be some investment, economic investments that they have to make, but it's often also just a better understanding of what behaviors precipitate the flow of pathogens, including African swine fever. The other aspect, the feeding of pigs will or food waste, which still is common practice. I mean, one mechanism would be did not allow it anymore and that's in high countries, that's a possibility, but there's also the possibility to process it. So there are no straightforward answers to this. We are also thinking about recommending developing strategy for containing it in certain areas and where that opportunity arises. So we need to have good surveillance, we need to have good information out there from the field in order to have developed policies that are useful for not just the large farms but also the smaller farms. So no straightforward answer. Anyway, I'll pass on to Carolyn. Yeah, I just, when we were doing these community interventions, I just thought of government really having very general programs to announce and and neglecting the village, the village level, smallholder. So I think it's going by the experience of putting in place community interventions here was an eye-opener because the smallholders themselves appreciated the constant, you know, orientation and monitoring. The team left a booklet for them to select a review and to record. So it's really not neglecting the village level of the smallholder farmers because sometimes in announcing government programs, these are very general holistic. We tend to neglect what the smallholders really need. So if it means village by village, then it can, it is possible because there is a network of local government units. It's just a matter of really of devoting or committing time and effort to look after the smallholders. Can I just add to that one further and I think Carolyn, you mentioned that at the meeting last week we mentioned the community animal health workers. And I think that's what you're saying and there's good experience from the Philippines in terms of involving them in the response because they have the trust of the local community and maybe that's something we need to promote and engage them in the action and in enhancing by security. Across the region, there's some countries where this works well in other countries, I mean where they are as a well-established network of community animal health workers and others, it's not so well established. So I think we need to go back to that and I would actually argue it has benefits beyond Africans find fewer to strengthen the network of community animal health workers. Thank you. Thank you very much. That's certainly some good talking points and a very thorough response to a broad question. There are a couple more questions here. Another one on anybody updates on the possible production of ASF vaccine. This is certainly an inevitable question with our ASF webinars and information sessions. So I'll hand to you need to tackle this one. Well, so far, only one official announcement was made from Vietnam. They started a bigger trial in the country earlier this year. However, it was suspended due to some sudden peak deaths. Well, the answer is so far, the vaccine is a bit far to put into the measure for control ASF just yet. So biosecurity is more an answer to tackle ASF. Thank you. One further question here. It seemed that border control is ineffective to stop the spread of ASF virus. ASF is still spreading and it seems unstoppable. Is there a really, is there really a way to stop the spread? I mean, I shouldn't laugh, actually. It's, yes. And I think it reminds us, you know, what this reminds us is that the production systems and ecosystems are all connected across the region. And so we think often in national context, but the reality is a lot of movement of people and products and also even pigs or wild boar across the region. And therefore, it's, I would argue, I've worked on this disease since 2005 in Europe and in Africa. And I would say it is unstoppable with the tools that we have at the moment. So what we can do is we can mitigate it and limit its impact that it has on farmers' livelihoods until vaccines are available. And maybe just to add to the vaccine question that the issue, one problem with the vaccine question is that there are some illegal vaccines out there that are used in some places. And we very much discourage that. But we can understand that smallholder farmers feel that this may be a solution for them in some places. And because they're desperate and they don't see. And particularly what I would say is vaccines are one of those things that people, if they're chief, people like them because they mean you don't have to change your behaviors. You can, you get something else as long as it's not expensive and you can keep doing running your business as you always have. But with this disease, we need change in the way how farms are being run. But we have to figure out how that can be done in a cost-effective and culturally and socially acceptable way. Thank you. Can you hear me? Oh, sorry. Yeah, sorry. Just may I add that I've noticed, especially in the Philippines where provinces have their own ordinances, cities within provinces have their own ordinances stopping movement. It's really not working. So perhaps look at working as a group, not as an administrative boundary, but work as a group of provinces or to really look at border control, not a city, not treated as one land mass. Perhaps, and probably there's some more positive result for it. Can I just add to that? It's a trans boundary disease. It's a classic trans boundary disease. It doesn't care about boundaries. It moves through ecosystems and ecosystem systems where there are pigs, domestic pigs and white pigs. You'd have to build a lot of walls, but walls, there's usually a hole in the wall. So we need to, exactly as Karen says, we need to think and work together on this. And that's within countries across provinces, but also across the region. And that's, I think, where they always playing a really good role in trying to get a regional approach, develop a regional approach. So it's managing this disease. On that regional approach, we've also got a question in the chat box asking whether the VLC course will be available to people outside the Asia Pacific region. So I'll pass on to uni for that one. Actually, the course will be for open for all. So it's an e-learning course. So it's open for all. You're welcome to join. Just we will announce the exact date of opening later through our social media. So please follow our official Asia Pacific Twitter. And also we might arrange something, releasing the message. And also on the bi-weekly update, we are sending to all the CVOs in the member countries in our region. So that information also will be shared among CVO lists. So please stay tuned and stay connected. We will announce soon. Thank you. And just finally, we've got one more. It's I guess it's more an observation in the question and answer section from Cambodia. The main challenges are poor biosecurity amongst free range pigs and movement of people and pork products is complex. So thanks for that input, Siddharth, from Cambodia. So that rounds out our webinar for today. I apologize for the few little glitches there with our webinar function. I guess the pandemic might be winding down, but we're still getting used to these online and mixed platforms. Thank you very much, Dirk, from from City University, Caroline from Filvert and uni of course from from FAO here. Thank you.