ASF resurface in China, Poland
China's plan to gradually rebuild the swineherd starting this year may fall as authorities in several provinces around the country have reported new African swine fever (ASF) outbreaks. Since February, several large pig breeders in China have started the import of piglets from France in a bid to restock their farms. However, the risk of new ASF outbreaks is high, despite the biosecurity measures adopted in the last year and a half by the Chinese pig producers.
New cases have been reported at the end of last week in several farms from Gansu province and in two piglet transports in Sichuan and Inner Mongolia provinces.
Since August 2018, the Chinese swine inventory has dropped by 50%, accounting for 25% in the global pig herd. Since the beginning of the ASF crisis in China, the country has become more and more dependent on pork imports and the losses for the industry are estimated at $140 billion, according to some analysts from the College of Animal Science and Technology at China Agricultural University.
The disease has spread through Asia and has impacted some other countries such as Vietnam, which culled 6 million pigs to deal with the outbreak, a figure that accounts for more than 20% of the national inventory. At the beginning of 2019, OIE and FAO experts have declared that none of the Asian countries affected by ASF doesn't have the capacity to deal with this crisis and the reality tends to prove them right.
On the other hand, the EU, the major pork supplier in the Chinese market is confronted with the same problem, with 7 member states fighting to contain the virus, of which, Romania, Poland and Bulgaria are the most affected. At the beginning of this week, Polish authorities have reported the second ASF outbreak of this year on a major pig farm near Poznan. 10,000 pigs were culled but the situation raises questions about the biosecurity in the region as the ASF virus seems to find its way to Germany and the rest of Europe.
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