International livestock veterinarian consultant and lecturer Dr. John Carr said this recently about African Swine Fever in China, “Some Chinese, I think, are living with it, but not proving too successful so far. So instead of dying [THE INDUSTRY] within two weeks, you’re dying in six months.”
When Dr. Carr first spoke about the severity of ASF in China, it appeared the Chinese were accepting it and living with the enormous catastrophic mess.
While waiting to catch a flight from Manila to the U.K. recently Carr said the country of Laos had fallen to ASF.
“Remember, that everybody’s three weeks behind in reporting ASF, so if Laos reported falling this week, they fell three weeks ago,” he said. “So the chances are that Thailand is the next domino, but I have warned them. Now I talked to the Thai vets recently, and they still don’t think they have a problem. But they do admit; they have no idea what’s going on in the jungle with the wild pig.”
Dr. Carr spent the time in the Philippines discussing biosecurity related to various disease problems. During a talk to the industry, government, media, and the allied industries, he warned them not to get too panicky.
“They’re cancelling meetings right, left and center. And I said, you can’t do that, and they go, It’ll spread PED, no it spreads air. Human beings don’t carry ASF. Just wash your hands with soap and water.”
So far so good as it pertains to ASF in the Philippines because it is an island nation. A government representative asked him, what’s your risk assessment about the chances ASF hits the Philippians. Carr told them none, and the room went deathly quiet. The reason for their concern had to do with the multitude of Chinese visitors each year. He told them to be grateful for the tourist business, but put up more dogs and signs at the border.
The Philippians is a net importer of pork, so they keep looking for more pigs because they don’t produce enough.
“They’re going to suffer from the price point because where they are currently importing from, that will go to China once their pent-up demand kicks in,” said Dr. Carr. “And she’s going to be a vacuum sucking up all of this importation.”
He said Britain would have the same problem because they produce about 50 per cent give or take of the bacon they eat.
Dr. Carr made one last point about the situation with China and the ASF outbreak, referring to how the government seems to want to solve it by eating the pork and not killing the infected pigs.
“China is still eating away through her herd,” he said. “You cannot hoard pork – it only has a freezer life of 6 months.”
Carr agreed with a media report suggesting that China has eaten millions of pigs and not ‘destroyed’ them. That is why the countries around (and surely Canada) are finding ASF in illegally imported pork.
“Asia is trying to eat its way through its pig industry.”
Dr. Carr said China is building farms.
“We look at empty sites trying to think about how to repopulate them, but some are very sad. You have an abandoned farm and this big mound of dead pigs underneath the ground. But some of them are buried like two meters from the front door.”
He said it is hard to nail down numbers of infected ASF pigs in Asian countries. China has official figures at 20 to 25 per cent but more like 50 to 60 per cent infected. The Vietnamese will lose 90 per cent of their herd.
“If the Philippines gets African Swine Fever, they’ll lose 50 per cent and maybe 90 per cent. I think the Chinese will lose 70 per cent.” •
—By Harry Siemens