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By Dominique Patton and Hallie Gu
BEIJING (Reuters) – China on Monday confirmed a new case of African swine fever in Hunan province in the south of the country, marking the 50th outbreak of the highly contagious disease that affects the world's largest pork producer.
The disease, which can be fatal for pigs and does not contain vaccine, has reached 14 provinces and municipalities in China since its first detection in early August. Most recent cases have occurred in the south, where per capita pork consumption is the highest in the country.
The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture said that the last case was on a
small farm of 119 pigs in Baojing County, near the border with Chongqing. Two cases were reported this weekend, one in the Chongqing Municipality, near Baojing.
China has linked pig feed with pigs to the majority of first cases of African swine fever in recent months, but has not given the cause of other cases.
Analysts said the country's animal feed industry may have been contaminated, suggesting that the risks of a rapid spread of the disease are high.
"It is likely that the feed products are the source of the contamination, and the outbreaks are very serious," said Yao Guiling, an analyst at China-America Commodity Data Analytics.
Beijing has banned the feeding of pigs in kitchen waste, tightened controls on the transport of live animals and ordered the repression of slaughterhouses transforming sick pigs, among other efforts to control the spread of the disease .
Sick animals can still enter the food chain. Last week, Taiwan announced that it had discovered the African swine fever virus in a sausage product made by the largest Shuanghui processor and imported from China.
(Report by Dominique Patton and Hallie Gu, edited by Tom Hogue and Susan Fenton)
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