According to results published on Wednesday, a vaccine produced in China for African swine fever, which destroyed the pig herd in the country and caused pork prices to skyrocket, is advancing very smoothly.
Since August 2018, the outbreak of the animal disease has devastated the country's supply of pork, where it is a staple product, with millions of animals being culled.
The disease killed around 40 percent of the pig farm in China, leading to a massive spike in prices as authorities struggled to stabilize supplies.
Chinese scientists have tested an African swine fever vaccine developed locally on hog farms in three provinces, and the tests showed great progress, a state media report released Wednesday on the Ministry of Agriculture's website, disclosed.
The Harbin Veterinary Research Institute vaccine was used in field testing on 3,000 pigs in north-eastern Heilongjiang Province, north-western Xinjiang Region, and central Henan Province from April to June, it said. With no clinical anomaly, the vaccinated animals grow healthy, while most sows have no miscarriages. The mortality rate after immunization is less than one percent.
Based on a paper from the China Science Daily published on the website of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, authorities have been looking at ways to avoid the outbreak, and the vaccine strain passed a national examination in December 2019.
According to Dirk Pfeiffer, a veterinary epidemiology professor at the City University of Hong Kong, in a report by Dominique Pattonto of Reuters, to find out whether the vaccine works, it must be tested in an environment where "you would have the different circumstances, like types of farm and densities, and then you'd become more confident in understanding what the vaccine can actually do."
In March, the institute performed environmental release studies followed by field tests in the provinces, it said. More work is underway and the Institute is planning to speed up research and development without providing any timeline for commercial production, it said.
Until now, vaccinated swines have proved healthy, Xinhua news disclosed, with no miscarriages in sows or huge differences in sizes of litters, when compared to a control group. The vaccinated animals are neither shedding nor transmitting the disease, the report added.
Meanwhile, 20 international markets, including the US, European Union and Canada, have been granted clearance to export pork to China, the US Department of Agriculture data showed. US pork exports to China also registered an all- time peak in April of 112,327 tons, a separate Reuters report citing US Census Bureau data, indicated.
