August 21, 2018

China hit by 3rd African swine fever outbreak 

China was hit by a third outbreak of African swine fever this month, with 88 hogs dead on Sunday, Aug. 19, in Lianyungang city in Jiangsu province.

According to a Reuters report, 615 hogs have been infected with the disease in Lianyungang since Aug. 15

China's first case of the ASF was reported on Aug. 3 in Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning province.

A second outbreak was reported on Aug. 16 about 600 kilometers east of Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province.

The report said that the pigs found infected in Zhengzhou had traveled from a live market in Heilongjiang province which, like Liaoning, is in China's northeast.

Liaoning, where the first case of ASF was reported, has culled more than 8,000 hogs, while a unit of WH Group, the world's top pork producer, culled 1,362 pigs at the slaughterhouse where the Zhengzhou cases were discovered, the Reuters report said.