The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture recently confirmed the sixth African swine fever case on Sunday. The department added that 134 hogs had died due to complications. The latest case was reported in Xuancheng city in the eastern Anhui province.
The latest confirmed cases of African swine fever in China brings the total outbreak to six. Hundreds of cases of African swine fever have been monitored by the Ministry of Agriculture for the past 6 months. Xuancheng city is located around 70 km southeast of the city of Wuhu where another swine fever case was also reported last week.
While the African swine fever does not affect humans, it is hugely damaging to hogs and other animals. The Ministry of Agriculture stated that products yielded from affected hogs are banned from being transported into and outside the infected or quarantined area.
The latest case forced the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture to completely ban the transport of pig production. This decision has completely crippled the pork industry in the country. Farmers, meat processors, and slaughterhouses are now completely shut down in affected regions.
For the first time, even live hogs from unaffected provinces are banned from being transported. Many analysts have conferred that this decision will further disrupt China's pig trade.
Since the discovery of the first case last month, the African swine fever virus has spread to five provinces. These provinces are Liaoning on the north, Henan in central China, and the eastern provinces of Zhejiang, Anhui, and Jiangsu.
As of this writing, the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture has ordered the slaughter of more than 38,000 hogs in order to at least mitigate, if not completely prevent, the spread of the virus. China, the world's biggest producer of pork, scrambles to mitigate the outbreak.
In a statement acquired by Xinhua, the Chinese Agriculture Ministry said that while the virus continues to spread, the cases are completely under control. Last week, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization warned of the possibility of the virus spreading to neighboring countries and some parts of Asia.
The African swine fever virus does not affect humans but it causes severe hemorrhagic fever in hogs and wild boars. Reports claim that once affected, it will result in death within just a few days without recourse of possible cure.
Vaccine or antidote to fight the virus is still unavailable. So far, the most effective method of containing the spread of the virus is the mass cull of all infected hogs.
