Determination of African swine fever virus viability in meat during long-term storage and sous-vide cooking using cell culture and real-time PCR combined with palladium compound pre-treatment methods

African swine fever virus is the causative agent of an acute and highly contagious disease affecting domestic and wild members of the family Suidae. The virus can be transmitted by direct contact among infected animals or via a contaminated environment or feed. Since the contaminated meat or products thereof have been characterised as the most probable vehicle in several outbreaks, the aim of the present study was to define viability of the virus in meat under conditions of freezing and chilling (−25 °C and 6 °C) and low temperature cooking (55 °C for 2.5 h and for 1 h). Two independent methods were employed; cell culture as a reference and real-time polymerase chain reaction combined with palladium compound (BB-PdCl2 and PdCl2COD) pre-treatment as an alternative method. Obtained results demonstrated a minimal decrease in the infectious virus titre during storage at −25 °C, and a remaining amount of viruses in meat stored at 6 °C for 14 months that can cause a disease after ingestion. The results obtained by both methods applied on the samples corresponded to each other. In contrast, results related to the virus’ persistence in thermal-treated meat indicated much lower stability than previously thought; infectious viruses were not detected by infectivity assay after the treatment at 55 °C for 1 h. The observed difference of one order of magnitude of virus detected using palladium compound pre-treatment suggests presence of intact rather than infectious viruses. A better suitability of PdCl2COD compared to BB-PdCl2 pre-treatment was demonstrated.