https://www.msn.com/en-us/news...bASs?ocid=spartandhp

By China’s official estimates, the present outbreak of African swine fever, which affects pigs but is harmless to humans, has already been catastrophic. More than a million pigs have been culled, according to the Chinese government.

many farmers and livestock analysts say they assume that the highly contagious disease has infected more pigs, in more places, than Chinese officials have acknowledged.

African swine fever, for which no treatment or vaccine exists, has spread to every Chinese province and region, and has also jumped the border into Cambodia, Mongolia and Vietnam. Analysts at the Dutch bank Rabobank, which lends heavily to the global agriculture industry, have predicted that China will produce 150 million to 200 million fewer pigs this year because of deaths from infection or culling. That would be a hefty chunk of the 700 million pigs slaughtered in China in 2018.

“There’s no way to control something that you don’t acknowledge exists,” said Christine McCracken, a Rabobank analyst. In places where infections were not reported or acknowledged, farmers and pork producers might not be taking adequate safety precautions, she said. They may even be selling and processing infected animals. African swine fever can linger for weeks or months in uncooked and frozen pork.

Sooner or later this will be over here too.
Seems like many of China's infectious pests
have been "imported".

George

Interesting fact on radio today. There are not enough pigs in the rest of the world to make up the deficit in China brought on by this awful disease.

Got a friend who is a vet/wildlife disease guy and he says it will devastate the N.American pork industry eventually.

We are living in the good old days of hog and deer hunting right now and the past few years. The chronic wasting disease will eventually get to the deer nation wide.

The thing about the African virus afflicting hogs is that it could mutate and jump to humans.

Mutating is what makes viruses so difficult to curb.