Hong Kong pigs should be slaughtered separately from those imported from mainland China to avoid rapid spread of African swine fever, experts urged.
On Tuesday, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned the rapid onset of African swine fever in China. The detection in areas more than 1,000 km apart means the deadly pig virus could spread to other Asian countries at any time. Hong Kong imports approximately 4,000 live pigs a day from the mainland, while about 290 pigs are supplied daily by local farms.
"People can take infection from the slaughterhouse back to the farm," said Professor Dirk Pfeiffer at City University's College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences. According to the South China Morning Post, there are four outbreaks of the highly contagious swine disease on the mainland this month. The first case was reported on August 3 in the northeastern city of Shenyang.
The virus can cause hemorrhagic fever with high mortality rates in pigs, and the most virulent forms are deadly in 100 percent of infected animals. The virus can be spread by consuming the infected products or through direct contact with secretions from the infected pig, where it could persist for long periods in uncooked pig products.
As per Pfeiffer, Hong Kong authorities should make a move to keep the virus out of the city given no cure or vaccine for it exists.
"Every consignment of pigs [for food] must be accompanied by an official certificate attesting that the animals are healthy and showed no clinical sign of infectious diseases," the spokesman for the Centre for Food Safety said.
The small number of breeding pigs imported into Hong Kong from Guangdong should also be accompanied by an official health certificate issued by the mainland authority. The animals must be inspected by the department's officers as soon as they arrived, and be quarantined after that.
China is considered to be a major pig-producing country, which is accounted for almost half of the global population of pigs - estimated at 500 million.
Hong Kong needs to be prepared because the African swine fever outbreak in pork would likely be "a much bigger disrupter of communities than chickens," said Dr. Howard Wong Kai-hay, who is also the director for professional development at City University's college of veterinary medicine.
Pfeiffer has been studying the virus since 2005. He said that it could have probably transmitted out of Africa through infected food waste from ships or airliners that had been sold to pig farms.
