China is struggling to contain outbreaks of African Swine Fever that has shown up in three provinces this month.
WH Group, owners of Smithfield Foods, has closed one of its pork-packing plants.
The highly-contagious disease is deadly.
The Swine Health Information Centre said “the swine industry has never seen an ASF outbreak in such a production landscape, and control measures are untested.
“The Chinese industry has had difficulties in controlling Foot-and-mouth disease and Classical swine fever, and has relied heavily on the use of vaccines.
“As a vaccine is not available for ASF, the industry is thus reliant on heightened biosecurity, rapid diagnosis, complete isolation, and then elimination of infected pigs and contaminated materials.”
That will be challenging in a country and industry that involves many small family herds and some commercial operations larger than anything in Canada.
