BEIJING: China is battling to control the rapid spread of deadly African swine fever (ASF) across the world’s largest hog herd after four outbreaks…
BEIJING: China is battling to control the rapid spread of deadly African swine fever (ASF) across the world’s largest hog herd after four outbreaks in three weeks, stoking worries the disease could spread to Southeast Asia.
The discovery of ASF in China, which accounts for nearly half the world’s pork production and is the world’s highest per capita consumer of the meat, marks a new front in the disease’s spread from Europe through Russia.
“The swine industry has never seen an ASF outbreak in such a production landscape, and control measures are untested,” warned the Swine Health Information Center, a US research body.
SYMPTOMS
ASF is the most devastating swine disease. It causes fever, hemorrhaging in the skin and internal organs and death in 2-10 days, according to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).
Mortality rates can be as high as 100 per cent.
It is transmitted by ticks and direct contact between animals, and can also travel via contaminated food, animal feed, and people traveling from one place to another. There is no vaccine. It is not harmful to humans.
FROM RUSSIA, WITH SWINE FEVER
Russia, the largest country by land mass hit by the infection, has spent a decade struggling to control the disease. ASF has killed around 800,000 pigs, infected pig farms owned by top agricultural companies, including Miratorg and RusAgro, and reduced small-hold farm pork production by half.
Its gradual spread over the past year or so across Russia towards China’s borders, had left Chinese pigs vulnerable to infection, experts say.
An outbreak in Irkutsk in March 2017 marked the disease’s first long jump from central eastern Europe to eastern Russia, 1,000 km from the Chinese border, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
