China: African Swine Fever Threatens Pork Production

[oyarde]

Hunted duck SHOULD be cheaper than farmed duck.

When I was young at the end of ea Oct I would load up my Grandfathers finely crafted 12 Ga with some #4's and stalk the Wood Ducks along the creek bank for a couple days and put four or so in the freezer for Thanksgiving , Christmas and New Years family dinners . To hunt the Kings ducks now is for the wealthy , not the poor peasant .

[specsaregood]

Hunted duck SHOULD be cheaper than farmed duck.

Not really.

[Swordsmyth]

Not really.

Why would you say that?

You don't have to feed or protect it, just find and shoot it

[Swordsmyth]

The African swine fever virus may have already decimated Chinese swine herds by 40 percent over the last year, according to a Rabobank estimate, greatly exceeding previous appraisals of 15 to 26 percent, Reuters reported July 29.

More at: https://worldview.stratfor.com/situa...over-last-year

[Swordsmyth]

Pig breeders in China who have managed to keep fatal African swine fever off their farms since outbreaks began a year ago are now set to reap rewards, with some in line for record profits of $200 per hog thanks to soaring prices.The virus has reached every province of the world's top pork producer. The pig herd shrank a third in July from the same month a year ago, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, though many observers believe half the herd is already gone.
Since June, slumping production has triggered a price surge. National average hog prices passed the 2016 record of 21 yuan per kilogramme earlier this month to hit 24.6 yuan ($3.48) per kg on Aug. 19, according to data from Shanghai JC Intelligence Co Ltd.
That trend is unusual: Hog prices are typically weak in summer months when pork demand is lower, and start rising in September at the start of the peak season.
"The timing is earlier than expected," said Pan Chenjun, senior analyst at Rabobank. "August is still the low season but now everyday we see an increase in price."
The high prices will eat into profits at processors like WH Group, which last week reported a 17% decline in first half profits and warned that prices are set to keep climbing.


China's consumers are also starting to feel the bite from African swine fever.
Retail pork prices are up more than 40% since the first outbreak in August 2018 and anticipated by government officials to soar as much as 70% in the second half of the year - just as demand for China's favourite meat picks up with the onset of cooler weather and the important Lunar New Year festival. ($1 = 7.0611 Chinese yuan renminbi)

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/graphic-china...031244432.html

[Swordsmyth]

China's southwestern province of Sichuan, the country's top pig-farming province, is removing some restrictions on hog production to stabilise supply after an epidemic of African swine fever reduced herds.Sichuan produced more than 65 million pigs in 2017, according to official data, or more than 9% of the country's total, making it China's leading producer.
But many farms have been hit by African swine fever, an incurable disease that kills almost all pigs infected, which is still spreading through the world's leading pork market.
Sichuan's Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said in a notice on Monday it was setting 'red lines' for pig output in the province, with city mayors responsible for ensuring self-sufficiency of pork.
To achieve a provincial target of 40 million hogs a year, local authorities should promote standardized and modern farming, and support farms that produce 2 million hogs or more each year with integrated feed plants and slaughtering facilities, said the notice published on the department's website.
They should also remove any obstacles to projects under construction and allow them to be completed as soon as possible, it said.


Beijing is trying to reduce the number of live pigs transported around the country, one of the main ways identified as contributing to the rapid spread of African swine fever in the country.
Sichuan also said it would encourage farms to introduce superior pig breeds from abroad as it tries to boost output, and added that small farmers will receive more support in improving biosecurity and in selection for breeding

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/chinas-sichua...034533945.html

[Swordsmyth]

One could see it coming from a mile away, but still the breakout in Chinese pork prices as a result of the country's "pig ebola" outbreak and the ongoing trade war with the US, is a sight to behold.
As the chart below shows, pork prices in China have soared to record highs in the past two weeks, adding pressure on a government trying to contain food-price inflation during the trade war with the U.S., even as the country's Producer Price index posted its first negative print in 3 years, putting China in a bind: contain soaring food inflation, or stimulate the economy and risk an angry public backlash (something we discussed extensively two weeks ago).

Prices of China's favorite protein - used in dishes such as lunchtime dumplings and spicy mapo tofu — have surged 18% in China in just two weeks, since the week ended Aug. 9 and are up more than 50% in the past year. The average price of pork, excluding offal, in the week ended Aug. 23 was 31.77 yuan a kilogram ($2.02 a pound), according to data from China’s Ministry of Commerce.



Speaking to the WSJ, Darin Friedrichs, senior Asia commodity analyst, at INTL FCStone in Shanghai said "it’s hard to know where prices are going to go. We’re in uncharted territory." He said his own grocery bills have increased by 35% for pork belly since November and 32% for pork chops since January.
As we reported earlier in August, the surge in pork prices and increases in the cost of vegetables were already the main driver of a 2.8% rise in the CPI in July, the fastest pace in 18 months, even as PPI dipped negative.

The 27% surge in pork prices - a core component of the Chinese CPI basket - lifted the headline inflation index by 0.59%. It could not have come at a worse time: due to the trade war between the US and China, Beijing's tariffs on U.S. pork have increased prices of American meat.
Traditionally, Chinese people typically eat far more pork than other meat; in fact China is the single biggest consumer of pork in the world. However, a customer at a wholesale market in Beijing told the WSJ her family was now eating more chicken than pork. Indeed, as pork prices rise to levels that are prohibitively high for many, consumers are changing their buying habits, pushing up prices for other meat. Chicken breast is about 20% more expensive than a year ago, while duck breast has nearly tripled in price to 14,600 yuan (US$2,125) a tonne, making duck farmers into overnight millionaires.
Pork prices are likely to remain elevated for some time, said Betty Wang, a senior economist at ANZ. She said farmers have culled so many pigs that it would take a while for supplies to build up again. "If people feel that food inflation is going up, it may spur policy actions," she added, although it wasn't clear just how Beijing can find a quick and easy substitute to domestic farms.
Until things normalize, Beijing has taken an idea from the Trump administration: outside the wholesale market, red banners advertised government subsidies for pork slaughterhouses. The government has been trying to push farms and slaughterhouses to increase production to relieve pressure on prices, but herd numbers continue to fall.
"I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Xiao Tong, a vendor who has been selling pork for nearly 20 years in Beijing. "Every day the price rises more." Prices are so high that not only retail customers, but businesses can no longer afford to buy pork: she said even her longtime clients, such as local restaurants and construction companies, are trimming purchases.
Making matters worse, another major spike in prices is coming once short-term inventories are depleted. Chenjun Pan, a senior analyst at Rabobank in Hong Kong, said storage levels of frozen pork seem to have also fallen in recent months.
Meanwhile, China’s pork imports have jumped more than 60% in the second quarter, but foreign supplies have been constrained or are more expensive, especially with Chinese tariffs on US products. Beijing levied new tariffs totaling 50% on pork from the U.S. last year and in June suspended pork imports from Canada.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...-record-levels

[Swordsmyth]

As African swine flu - better known as 'pig ebola' - continues to ravage Chinese pig farms, triggering a massive surge in pork prices, we've written about how consumers' search for alternatives to the dietary staple has turned duck farmers into millionaires overnight.
But duck isn't the only protein alternative that Chinese consumers are buying up in droves as pork prices have climbed nearly 70% over the past year, to near-unprecedented levels.

As China Dialogue, a China-based English-language publication, reports, surging demand for Donkey meat and skin in China is rapidly depleting donkey stocks in Kenya. If demand continues to climb, animal rights activists warn, the Kenyan Donkey could soon disappear from the East African country.

Over the past five years, four new donkey abbattoirs have opened up in Kenya to help meet rising demand in China. This, of course, predates the 'pig ebola' outbreak, as the Communist Party and state-backed agribusiness has struggled to source food for China's 1.4 billion consumers even under normal conditions.
Though most US consumers would probably cringe at the thought of eating donkey, their meat is considered a delicacy in China. Their skins are also processed into a traditional remedy called ejiao that's used to treat everything from anemia to dizziness. Ejiao has also grown in popularity alongside China's growing prosperity.
According to a report by the African Network for Animal Welfare, the slaughterhouses are operating at less than half of their capacity, as demand from China has already depleted the donkey population from around 1.8 million animals in 2009 to roughly half that level - about 900,000 - today.

Some activists have warned that Chinese demand is making the Kenyan donkey trade 'unsustainable'. Like other forms of livestock, donkeys are slow to reproduce, with gestation periods of 11-14 months.
The rising demand has also caused the price of donkey meat to soar. Today, one donkey can fetch a price of between 15,000 to 25,000 Kenyan shillings ($145-$242), up from 6,000 to 8,000 shillings ($58 to $78) four years ago. Males typically cost more.
This could create serious problems for the local economy. Many Kenyans rely on donkeys for transportation, particularly in the northern part of the country, where donkeys pull carts that carry water, firewood and other supplies. Higher donkey prices mean these staples are increasingly out of reach for the average merchant or farmer.


As the the swine flu outbreak worsens, news reports earlier this week claimed that Beijing is on the verge of releasing some of its emergency pork reserves as the number of pig casualties from the swine flu crosses 100 million, equivalent to one-third of China's pig population.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-...tbreak-worsens

Somehow we are supposed to believe that it never gets any worse than 1/3 even though they said that a long time ago?

[Swordsmyth]

Vietnam has culled about 4.7 million pigs to contain an outbreak of African swine fever that has spread to all 63 provinces in the Southeast Asian country, an official said on Friday.The disease first detected in February has been hard to contain because there is no vaccine, said Pham Van Dong, head of the Animal Health Department.
"We have culled around 4.7 million pigs and, as you can see, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has confirmed that the outbreak has now spread to all 63 provinces and cities," Dong told Reuters.
Pork accounts for three-quarters of total meat consumption in Vietnam, a country of 96 million people where most of its farm-raised pigs are consumed domestically.
Vietnam's pig herd at end July was down 18.5% to 22.2 million pigs since December.
The pork industry is valued at 94 trillion dong ($4 billion) a year, or nearly 10% of the country's agricultural sector.

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/vietnam-culls...111223305.html

[Swordsmyth]

The Philippines on Monday reported its first cases of African swine fever, becoming the latest country hit by the disease that has killed pigs from Slovakia to China, pushing up pork prices worldwide.

Infected pigs were found in two towns near the Philippine capital Manila and authorities have culled more than 7,000 pigs within a one-kilometre (0.6-mile) radius, said Agriculture Secretary William Dar.
He said the nation was not facing an epidemic and urged Filipinos to continue eating pork, which is a critical market and accounts for 60 percent of meat consumption in the Philippines.
The Asian country is the world's 8th biggest pork producer by volume and its swine industry is estimated at 260 billion pesos ($5 billion), according to the agriculture department.
Dar said 14 of 20 samples sent to a UK laboratory tested positive for African swine fever, but it will take another week to confirm how virulent the strain is.
The virus was first recorded in Rodriguez town, 10 kilometres east of Manila. Other undisclosed areas are still being closely monitored for possible infection, he added.
"We have never been in an epidemic, just to highlight that. We are responding to the increased number of deaths of pigs," Dar said.
Authorities suspect the swine fever cases stemmed from backyard hog raisers who feed pigs "swill", leftover food scraps from hotels and restaurants.
The agriculture department added the virus could also be traced to smuggled frozen meat and returning overseas Filipino workers who brought back infected meat products.

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/philippines-c...--finance.html

[Swordsmyth]

The Mid-Autumn Festival, one of the most celebrated festivals in Asia, may not seem like the right time to promote faux-meat pastries in China—but two companies are trying to do just that.
Traditionally a harvest festival held on the day of a full moon in the fall, Mid-Autumn celebrations involve family reunions, admiring the moon, and gifting one another boxes of mooncakes—a disc of flaky pastry usually filled with a thick paste. In China, there are two main varieties of mooncakes—the southern styles popular in Hong Kong and Guangdong province that are usually made of lotus seed paste, while the Shanghai-Suzhou-style incorporates red-bean paste or a minced pork filling.
To offer an alternative to the pork-filled variety, Beijing-based Zhen Rou (珍肉), or “treasure meat,” began selling artificial-meat mooncakes this week on Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao, part of the Alibaba empire. The company got more than 3,000 orders for its boxes of six mooncakes, made of wheat powder and protein isolated from green peas, which the company says it sources from Canada (link in Chinese). It began delivering today (Sept. 10), just three days ahead of the Mid-Autumn Festival on Friday. Consumers will need to bake or pan-fry the mooncakes before eating them.
Another company, Shenzhen-listed Yantai Shuangta Food, said it had received 1,000 orders for its plant-based mooncakes from Alibaba’s Tmall, local finance newspaper China Securities Journal reported during the weekend. Both Chinese companies price their mooncakes around the same as a traditional mooncake.

Pork prices are sky-high in China due to a yearlong outbreak of African swine fever that saw mass culling of pig herds—in August, pork prices soared 47%, almost double the increase in July. A recent publication under China’s state-run newspaper Global Times even tried to dissuade people from eating pork, citing health concerns over high fat.
Already, Yantai Shuangta Food and Zhen Rou have signed a memo to promote other fake meat products, according to an announcement last week. Meanwhile, California-based plant-based meat substitutes maker Impossible Foods recently said it’s making China “highest priority for future expansion.“


More at: https://qz.com/1705142/this-mid-autu...meat-mooncake/

[Swordsmyth]

South Korea on Tuesday reported its first cases of African swine fever, becoming the latest country hit by the disease that has killed pigs from China to North Korea, pushing up pork prices worldwide.
Five pigs found dead at a farm in Paju, a city near the inter-Korean border, were confirmed to have been infected with the virus, an official with Seoul's agriculture ministry told AFP.
"At this point, it's too early to confirm if the case stemmed from the North," the official added.
Seoul's agriculture minister Kim Hyun-soo said 3,950 pigs from three farms in Paju were to be culled.


The confirmed cases in the South came around three months after Pyongyang told the World Organisation for Animal Health that dozens of pigs had died from the disease at a farm near the Chinese border, according to the South's agriculture ministry.
In June, Seoul said the disease was "highly likely" to enter the country from the North and ordered fences to be erected at farms along the border to prevent possible contact between pigs and wild boar.
There are around 6,700 pig farms across South Korea and pig farming accounts for 40 percent of the total livestock industry.
In May, the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization said pork prices had risen by up to 50 percent both in China and on the Chicago futures exchange as a result of the outbreak.
Last month, it said almost five million pigs in Asia had died or been culled because of the spread of the disease.

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/south-korea-c...004531266.html

[Swordsmyth]

The spread of swine fever into China can be blamed on Beijing’s “pork diplomacy” move to shift imports from the US and Canada – two nations free of the disease – to Russia, the worst-affected country in the world.

Beijing’s mistakes haven’t only been geopolitical. A nationwide campaign to increase efficiency and protect the environment by restricting pig breeding to large farms in 2016 resulted in the closure of more than 150,000 smaller farms, cutting short supplies long before the swine fever outbreak took hold.

More at: https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opini...ice-pork-china

[Swordsmyth]

South Korea confirmed its fourth case of African swine fever on Tuesday, as Pyongyang was yet to respond to Seoul's request to make joint efforts to tackle the deadly animal disease.
The latest case was confirmed at a farm in Paju, a city near the inter-Korean border where the nation's first case was recorded, according to Seoul's agriculture ministry.
South Korea has culled around 15,000 pigs since the first case was reported on September 17.
"We have carried out an immediate culling and are proceeding with an epidemiological investigation," the ministry said in a statement, adding that some 2,300 pigs were being raised at the affected farm.
Health authorities also issued a "standstill" order from Tuesday noon -- effectively restricting workers at pig farms from moving around the country for 48 hours in an effort to stop the virus from spreading.
Given the "grave situation", the restrictions may be extended for affected regions, said agriculture minister Kim Hyeon-soo, noting another suspected case in Ganghwa, a county near the border.


Kim Jun-young, a vet and a vice president of the Korean Veterinary Medical Association in the South, said it was possible the outbreak had spread to all provinces in the isolated North.
"North Korea does not have enough disinfectants, and (it is likely that) pigs are simply being buried after being culled," Kim said.
"It's possible that the virus has already been spread to all regions of the North if anyone dug the bodies of dead pigs and sold the meat, or... vultures ate them and spread the virus."
There are around 6,700 pig farms across South Korea and pig farming accounts for 40 percent of the total livestock industry.
Seoul believes Pyongyang raises some 2.6 million pigs across 14 state-run farms. The outbreak could worsen food shortages in the impoverished North, where, according to the World Food Programme, its output last year hit the lowest level since 2008.

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/seoul-confirm...024339388.html

[Swordsmyth]

There is a reason why an increasingly desperate Beijing is willing to suspend tariffs on US pork exports, and it has nothing to do with trade war de-escalation or concessions, and everything to do with preventing an angry and hungry mob from running rampant across China's streets.

As Caixin reports, the widespread outbreak of African swine fever that has prompted China to slaughter millions of pigs has caused 1 trillion yuan ($140 billion) of direct losses, an industry expert estimates; if correct, the direct damage from the "pig ebola" is far greater than the monetary damages incurred from two years of escalating trade tariffs with the US.
The shocking number was unveiled at a pig industry forum last Tuesday by Li Defa, who heads the College of Animal Science and Technology at China Agricultural University, and who notes that the upstream and downstream of the pork industry chain, such as pig feed and catering industry, were not included in the calculation, suggesting the full indirect losses from the crippling pork virus could be orders of magnitude greater.


That’s contributed to broader food inflation. In August, China’s consumer price index, which measures the prices of a select basket of consumer goods and services, rose 2.8% year-on-year, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The average pork price increased 46.7% year-on-year — the fastest pace in more than eight years — adding 1.08 percentage points to CPI growth.

China pork price inflation jumped from +38% in August to +84% in September - WOW. All meat prices now record high. Shortages reported. Imports rumored. Hang on! pic.twitter.com/ZOUkIoZ9Es
— Global AgriTrends (@AgriTrends) September 29, 2019

The price of live pigs has surpassed 40 yuan per kilogram in late -September, more than doubling from when the epidemic first became publicly known in August last year.
Even the WaPo recently noted that "the most pressing political problem facing China’s leaders this week may not be the ongoing protests in Hong Kong. Nor the protracted trade war with the United States. No, it is probably a shortage of pork — during the Chinese zodiac year of the pig, no less — that has become so severe that the rulers of the Communist Party declared stabilizing pork supply and prices to be an 'important political task'."
Pork, as is widely known, is the main meat consumed in China, accounting for more than 60% of the country’s meat demand. The country is expected to consume 55 million tons of pork in 2020 with an estimated population of 1.4 billion, said Li: the Chinese love to eat pork. Red fried pork. Sweet-and-sour pork ribs. Glazed pork belly. Twice-cooked pork. Pork dumplings. Trotters. Chinese eat an average of 120 pounds of pork a year. Half the world’s pork is consumed here.

But with a slew of holidays on deck, officials are increasingly worried that public discontent will overshadow the celebrations. They are particularly concerned that pork shortages will ruin the “happy and peaceful atmosphere” required during the upcoming commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the biggest event on the Communist Party’s calendar this year.

“We should ensure pork supply by all means,” Vice Premier Hu Chunhua said at the end of last month, adding that China’s pork shortages would be “extremely severe” in the last quarter of this year and the first half of 2020.
“We must strengthen the guidance and management of public opinion,” he continued, according to a state media account of his remarks.

“If China loses more than half of its domestic pork production, it will not be easy to meet the demand gap by relying on foreign supplies,” Li said, failing to mention that if China is truly unable to restore its pork herds and prices continue to soar, the country's massive lower and middle classes will soon become very angry.
To try to stabilize prices and feed domestic supply, the central government pledged to raise purchases of pork from overseas markets, including the U.S., a move which was seen as an olive branch in the trade war, but which in reality was just Beijing desperate to give the angry population what it wants.
China also released 10,000 tons of pork from state reserves last week to cope with a supply shortfall ahead of the weeklong National Day holiday, although not only did the move fail to put a dent on the soaring price of pork, it was instantly absorbed as it represented less than 2 hours of pork need across China.

China math: pork eaten = 6,200 mt per hour. China's 10,000 mt release is less than 2 hours needs across China. #ASF https://t.co/hTEXGvjAYV
— Global AgriTrends (@AgriTrends) September 19, 2019

Should China fail to stabilize the country's collapsing pork population, the following scene from the SCMP, which shows women in China fighting over the last piece of discounted pork at a market, will become increasingly more frequent, and violent.

"Pulled" pork? These women in China were filmed fighting over the last piece of discounted pork at a market pic.twitter.com/WSEq4r9fG6
— SCMP News (@SCMPNews) September 20, 2019

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/pi...gh-pork-prices

[Swordsmyth]

South Korea on Wednesday confirmed two additional cases of African swine fever near its border with North Korea despite heightened efforts to contain the epidemic that has wiped out pig populations across Asia.The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs said lab tests confirmed the country's 10th and 11th cases of the disease at two farms in Paju, a border town where the first infection was confirmed on Sept. 17.
Officials have been scrambling to halt the spread of the disease, disinfecting farms, trucks and roads, banning livestock movement and destroying some 93,500 pigs. They plan to slaughter at least 17,000 more pigs, including the animals at farms within a 3-kilometer (2-mile) radius of the two Paju farms were infections were newly confirmed.

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/south-korea-c...064431640.html

[Swordsmyth]

China's hog herd fell by half in the first eight months of 2019 due to a devastating outbreak of African swine fever and will likely shrink by 55% by the end of the year, analysts at Rabobank said on Wednesday.The pace of herd losses will likely slow in the coming months due to reduced farm numbers and Chinese government measures to control the pig disease in the world's largest pork consumer, according to a report by Rabobank. However, the bank said relatively unstable market conditions will likely persist for the next three to five years.

Rabobank said in the report it expects China's pork production to fall by 10% to 15% in 2020, on top of a 25% drop in 2019.

In Vietnam, the world's sixth-largest pork producer, 25% of the country's total pig herd could be lost to African swine fever by year's end, according to Rabobank. Since February, 18% of pigs have died, the bank said.

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/chinas-hog-he...215308167.html

[Swordsmyth]

In a time when China is losing between a third and half of its pig herds as a result of the unprecedented decimation unleashed by African swine fever - less affectionately known as pig ebola - which has sent wholesale pork prices in China soaring to all time highs...


... and prompted local farmers to breed pigs the size of polar bears...


... China is increasingly finding itself at America's mercy.
As Bloomberg reports, as China's hog herd is collapsing, Beijing's imports of U.S. pork exploded to a weekly record.
According to USDA data, in the week ended Oct. 3, pig imports soared to 142,200 metric tons, more than 7 times greater than September's total shipments of 19,900 tons.

China signaled it may import as much as 400,000 tons to stem a domestic shortfall, and it now appears that the US may be the easiest source of said pigs, which needless to say grants the US substantial leverage in the ongoing trade talks. The swine fever outbreak killed millions of pigs. The country also appeared poised to boost purchases of agriculture products as a good-will gesture before talks between Washington and Beijing on easing trade tensions.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ch...ces-pig-crisis

[Swordsmyth]

By official accounts, the pig contagion wreaking havoc across Eastern Asia has virtually skipped over North Korea, with a single outbreak reported there in May. But wayward feral pigs have stoked concern that Kim Jong Un’s reclusive state is hiding an African swine fever disaster.Three wild boars were found dead in border areas separating the two countries earlier this month before being tested positive for the viral hemorrhagic disease, officials in South Korea said. The finding reflects the freedom with which animals roam the 4-kilometer (2.5 mile) wide buffer zone that divides the nations and creates an involuntary park and refuge for fauna.
It also hints at a spillover of the deadly virus from North Korea, where unofficial reports indicate the disease is spreading out of control. South Korea has deployed helicopters to disinfect parts of the 250-kilometer-long border-barrier, near which more than a dozen outbreaks have occurred on farms since the virus was first reported there a month ago.
African swine fever has spread to almost all areas of North Korea, and pigs in the western province of North Pyongan have been “wiped out,” said Lee Hye-hoon, who chairs the National Assembly’s intelligence committee, citing South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
The virus killed 22 hogs in May on a cooperative farm about 260 kilometers north of Pyongyang, near the border with China, North Korea’s agriculture ministry said in a May 30 report to the World Organization for Animal Health, or OIE.
But since then, there have been no follow-up reports to the Paris-based veterinary body, and scant coverage of the event in state media.
UN Delegate
The Food and Agriculture Organization has no information beyond the report received by the OIE, said Wantanee Kalpravidh, the United Nations agency’s Bangkok-based regional manager of the Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases. The FAO is awaiting approval to send a delegate to North Korea, she said in a text message Friday.
Widespread transmission of African swine fever, which isn’t known to harm humans but kills most pigs in a week, may put North Korea’s food security in graver jeopardy.
Crop production there is forecast to be smaller than usual for the rest of 2019 due to below-average rainfall and low water supplies for irrigation, the FAO said last month. About 40% of the population, or 10.1 million people, are estimated to be food-insecure and in urgent need of food assistance, according to results from an UN assessment conducted last April.
Worse Hunger
African swine fever will worsen hunger and malnutrition, said Cho Chunghi, who fled North Korea in 2011 after spending a decade working for the government’s animal disease control program. Many North Korean households raise pigs to earn money to buy rice.
“Pork accounts for about 80% of North Korea’s protein consumption and with global sanctions taking place, it’s going to be hard for the country to find an alternative protein source,” said Cho, who now works as a researcher at Good Farmers, a Seoul-based non-governmental organization that supports developing nations to generate profit through agricultural activities.
“The virus is extremely destructive as people are now unable to make money through raising pigs, while the country’s economy is restrained,” he said.
Pigs raised by individual farms outnumber those on state-owned and collective farms, which will make it almost impossible to halt the spread, especially given North Korea’s inexperience preventing and mitigating epidemics in animals, Cho said.
Russia, China
This lack of capacity is a threat to the entire Korean Peninsula, where the virus could become endemic, or generally present. That would make it more difficult to stamp out the disease through the usual steps of quarantining and culling diseased and vulnerable livestock. From there, it could also re-enter neighboring China and Russia.

More at: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/kim-j...210000315.html

[Swordsmyth]

China reported another outbreak of the African swine fever on Sunday in its northwestern province of Gansu, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said on its website.

The latest outbreak occurred in a breeding cooperative in a county in Gansu's Dingxi City, with 265 of the 287 infected pigs dying.

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/china-reports...155546213.html

[Swordsmyth]

In August, we reported that at least half of China's breeding pigs have died from African swine fever or been slaughtered to contain the spreading of the disease.
New figures published Monday from the Ministry of Agriculture of the People's Republic of China showed the pig-apocalypse continues to get worse. The country's herd in Sept. collapsed 41.1% YoY.

China is losing millions of pigs to an outbreak of African swine fever https://t.co/VypseSLjPK pic.twitter.com/1IWZmpNBJX
— Inkstone (@InkstoneNews) October 4, 2019

While government estimates are more conservative, the recent plunge in pig herds across the country could be around 50% to 55% by late 4Q19, Rabobank told Reuters.

"Next year, especially in the first half, production will go down further," Pan Chenjun, senior analyst at the bank, told Reuters last Friday.

The supply of the country's favorite meat has collapsed by 40% to 50% this year, depending on what statistics you read. This has already devastated rural communities and pushed up food prices to crisis levels.

"Something like 50% of sows are dead," Edgar Wayne Johnson, a veterinarian who has spent 14 years in China, told Reuters in June.

As the chart below shows, the Pork Index Guangdong Daily priced in dollars per kilogram has soared to record highs in Oct., adding pressure on Beijing to contain food-price inflation during the trade war with the US.



More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/...herd-september

[Swordsmyth]

South Korea is deploying snipers to the Demilitarised Zone with orders to shoot any wild boar that are seen in the buffer zone with North Korea before they can bring more cases of African swine fever into the South.

Sharpshooters from the military will be sent to the border on Tuesday, supported by civilian hunters and drones fitted with thermal imaging equipment to locate and track boar.

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/south-korea-d...104325741.html

[XNavyNuke]

We are one disease outbreak away from the Feds going full-bore CCP and requiring all animals be chipped at birth. Orange man's USDA putting the steps in place now.
https://www.thefencepost.com/news/pr...path-for-e-id/

In late April, following a meeting of the National Institute for Animal Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a factsheet that included the bombshell: the metal bangs tag and other official metal livestock identification tags are to be phased out and replaced by electronic identification.

The timeline is aggressive. By 2021, no new metal tags will be allowed. By 2023, even older breeding animals with metal tags in place must bear a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag.

XNN

[Swordsmyth]

The highly contagious and deadly African swine fever virus has spread to two more provinces in the Philippines, the world's 10th-largest pork consumer, officials said on Friday.Cases of infections were detected in some areas in Cavite, south of the nation's capital Manila, and in Nueva Ecija on Luzon island.
Cavite Governor Jonvic Remulla confirmed the cases detected in two villages in his province and said a "lockdown" had been declared to contain the disease.
Agriculture Secretary William Dar also confirmed infections in Nueva Ecija, but said they were "limited".

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/philippines-d...075754858.html

[Swordsmyth]

Due to the skyrocketing price of pork amid an ongoing shortage, rural Chinese are dusting off traditional dog meat recipes which had lost appeal until recently, SCMP reports.

"Why not choose dog meat if you want some meat?" recommended a waiter in Wan'an county located within Jiangxi province.


With many Chinese now priced out of pork, local supermarkets are selling rabbit meat even cheaper than normal at 43.6 yuan ($6.50 US) per kilogram. Those in Wan'an - officially labeled as a "county of poverty" by Beijing until 2018, are having a hard time even locating pork. The average salary in the region is around $353 (US) per month - around 25 - 33% less than those in large Chinese cities.
As a result, "most pork vendors have gone out of business because few rural residents, whose incomes are even lower than the county average, can afford it, according to Liu Gang, a villager in Jian county in Jiangxi," SCMP reports.
"It's not only expensive, but it’s also hard to purchase pork meat in rural villages," said Liu, adding "Many pigs died in nearby pig farms due to African swine fever earlier this year."

The country’s live hog population, which accounted for about half of the global total in 2018, had fallen 41.1 per cent at the end of September from a year earlier, according to a survey of 400 counties by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. It is unclear how much further it will fall before it bottoms out.
The Chinese government has instituted emergency measures to boost pig supply, trying desperately to help farmers expand production while scrambling to import pork to sure up supply. China’s imports of pork rose 43.6 per cent to 1.32 million tonnes in the first nine months of this year, according to China’s General Administration of Customs. -SCMP

Until China's pork problem is behind them, looks like dog is back on the menu.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/...-pork-shortage

[Swordsmyth]

China is the epicenter for this crisis, and CNN is reporting that the Chinese herd has “shrunk by around 130 million” since this epidemic first began last year…

The damage that African swine fever has wrecked on China’s pig population is hard to overstate. The country is home to half of all the pigs on the planet, and its herd has shrunk by around 130 million since the outbreak began about 13 months ago, according to a CNN Business analysis of data from the Chinese agricultural ministry. Many farmers are reluctant to restock pigs after they are slaughtered, fearing they’ll catch the disease.

To put that in perspective, there are only about 70 million pigs in the United States.
Yes, that number is for the entire country.
So the damage that has already been done in China is beyond cataclysmic, and this crisis is very far from over.
And according to the Washington Post, the losses in China are even higher than what CNN is reporting. If you can believe it, the Post says that “as many as half of China’s pigs” have already died…

As many as half of China’s pigs, an estimated 300 million, have died of the virus or been exterminated since the disease took hold 13 months ago.

Of course the virus continues to sweep through China like wildfire, and at this point Rabobank is projecting that up to 70 percent of China’s pigs could eventually end up dead.
And considering the fact that about half of all the pigs in the entire world are in China, that is a very sobering thing to hear.
Needless to say, this crisis has been dramatically driving up the price of pork. According to CNN, the price of pork in China is now nearly 70 percent higher than it was at this time last year…

African swine fever has ravaged China’s pig population, and the country’s consumers are feeling the pain. Some are even switching to other meats as the dietary staple becomes unaffordable.
Pork in China now costs nearly 70% more than it did a year ago, according to data released Tuesday by China’s National Bureau of Statistics.

For the average Chinese citizen, this is a really big deal, because pork accounts for about 70 percent of their total meat consumption.
So to keep their population fed, China has started to import massive quantities of pork and beef from the rest of the world…

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/health/glo...pigs-wiped-out

[Swordsmyth]

A new report from Bloomberg details how African swine fever has likely been exported to Russia. This could be problematic for Russia, due in part that if the hog-killing disease spreads, it could start wiping out large swaths of herds, as it has already done in China.
In the last several months, about 60 cases of African swine fever have been reported to Russian authorities in the Amur Oblast region in Russia, a federal district that borders China in the Russian Far East.


Russia's hog population in the Far East accounts for barely 2% of the country's total hog population, which for now, could be contained.
Rosselkhoznadzor, Russia's biosecurity watchdog, has been on guard for a cross-border spread since summer, there have been several reports of Chinse citizens attempting to sneak infected meat across checkpoints into Russia.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/commoditie...e-fever-russia

[Swordsmyth]

A recent case study of crash test simulations in China has shown that some researchers are involved in extremely inhumane animal testing. Images released with the case study show live pigs being used as crash test dummies.


The study highlighted the case of one test that involved 15 young pigs, who were strapped into car seats and used as dummies for high-speed simulations. Many of these pigs were still very young, having only been alive for 70 or 80 days before they were used in the tests. In the tests, the animals were strapped into various different seatbelts for impact testing.
Half of the animals died in the tests, and the others were badly injured and likely traumatized from the experience.


Zachary Toliver of PETA said that these experiments were senseless and cruel.

“Despite the existence of sophisticated animal-free models, experimenters continue to fasten abused, frightened animals into car seats and crash them into walls until their bodies are bloody, bruised, and mangled. Live pigs are pulverised in these tests, leaving them with broken bones and severe internal injuries before they’re killed and dissected,” he said.

“Pigs don’t naturally sit up in car seats. Their anatomy is also very different from that of humans, so the data obtained from these horrific animal experiments aren’t applicable to human car-crash victims. Car companies figured out years ago that these kind of experiments are worthless and tell us nothing about a human experience in a car crash,” he added.

[ZH: we have one question... aren't they facing a massive pig shortage?]


More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/technology...h-test-dummies

[Swordsmyth]

Pork Hyperinflation Sends Chinese Consumer Prices Soaring Most In 7 Years

[Swordsmyth]

Cross-border transmissions of African swine fever is becoming a significant issue across Asia.

Just last week, we warned about China exporting the hog-killing disease to Russia. Now it appears North Korea, a country that borders China, has already exported the virus to South Korea.
South Korean authorities have been scrambling to contain the outbreak since mid-September.
A new report from Reuters, indicates 380,000 pigs have been slaughtered since the end of September, in the northern region bordering North Korea.

"#Gimpo City and the Island of #Ganghwa #Incheon #SouthKorea are without a pig, not even a single pig. All are buried alive. Total almost 200K in the island (next to Gimpo) and Gimpo&Paju City. The price of pork stays the same"
��https://t.co/j5MTHItiNH
ℹhttps://t.co/8qBc6UIZyi pic.twitter.com/a9FLdg7rNa
— SaveKoreanDogs (@NamiKim_DogsSK) October 17, 2019

Already, the government has led a significant effort to slaughter nearly 3% of the country's pig herd to prevent further spread. The first swine-fever case emerged in mid-September.

Woo Hee-jong, a veterinary professor at Seoul National University, said government authorities aggressively killed pigs in the northern region to prevent the spread to large pig farms in the southern part of the country.

As of October 10, swine fever cases were zero, and the attempt to prevent a further outbreak might have worked but has come at the cost of 380,000 pigs.
So far, there are no reports of wild boar infected with the disease, but if that were the case, then the spread across the country would become unstoppable.


More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/commoditie...an-swine-fever