[ad_1]
In a teleconference more than two years ago, Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua urged health officials to redouble their efforts to curb a growing epidemic despite the initial “positive results” and suggested that measures to “strengthening quarantine and surveillance” would help prevent the spread of the virus.
Hu’s comments came before the discovery of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Instead, he was referring to a different and much more deadly disease: African swine fever (ASF) – a disease that affects pigs.
Chinese authorities first identified ASF in 2018 in Liaoning, a coastal province in northeast China. Unlike SARS-CoV-2, ASF does not threaten human health. However, the disease is very virulent in pigs and death rates are approaching 100%.
ASF is of particular concern in China, the world’s largest pork consumer and home to around half of the world’s pigs. Given the country’s huge pig population, ASF could turn China into a major reservoir of disease and pose a threat to China’s neighbors in the region if it becomes endemic.
Threats to food security
This year, China has reported 12 cases of ASF to the OIE, the intergovernmental body that tracks animal diseases, up from 105 in 2018. With the exception of a small increase in cases earlier this year, the number of PPP has steadily declined, according to official figures. .
Some industry experts, however, believe China may cloud the real toll of African swine fever on pig herds by underreporting the number of infections and painting an artificially rosy picture.
The cost of pork in China is an economic indicator. Tapping China’s strategic pork stock has helped Beijing stabilize pork prices from last year’s record highs, but ASF could still cause headaches of epic proportions.
An Asian Development Bank report put the economic cost of the epidemic in China last year at $ 50 to 121 billion (42.5 to 103 billion euros) with a minimum loss of 25 to 55 percent Chinese pig herds since 2018. The report also states that ASF threatens “increasing poverty, vulnerability and food insecurity” and poses a “substantial” risk to climate change resilience and health human.
The burden is disproportionately on small pig farmers.
Food safety standards fall through the cracks
Measures such as vigilant herd monitoring and the slaughter of pigs showing symptoms of ASF could help contain the current outbreak in China. But containing ASF in China is no easy task.
Small-scale pig farming, defined as backyard farms with 50 pigs or less, is an economic safety net or an important source of income for tens of millions of Chinese people, and accounts for nearly a third of national pig production. But this practice could be at the origin of the ASF epidemic in China.
Many small-scale pig farmers depend at least in part on swill – food scraps and kitchen scraps – to feed their pigs. While swill is an economical source of fodder, biosecurity or food safety standards are not always tightened.
Therefore, seawater is a particularly powerful transmission vector of African swine fever.
If ASF is suspected locally, some herders could sell their pigs before herds exhibit the disease, helping to spread the deadly virus more widely across the country.
ASF vaccines “for years”
Linda Dixon, ASF expert at the Pirbright Institute, an infectious disease research group, said that due to the complexity of ASF, it has proven “very difficult to make an effective vaccine” against the disease. .
Although there are several ongoing ASF vaccine trials, a commercialized vaccine is at best “a year or two away” if the current prototypes are found to be safe and effective, she said.
Paul Sundberg, executive director of the Swine Health Information Center, said there might even be vaccines in use in China that prevent some pigs from dying, but “cause low-level infection.” Ultimately, these mystery vaccines make disease control “more difficult”.
[ad_2]
Source link