Viral outbreak could affect Canadian swine producers

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This article was published 29/08/2018 (2065 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An outbreak of African swine fever is threatening havoc in the country that produces almost half the world’s hogs, making markets and hog producers jittery across the globe.

About 24,000 hogs from four farms have been slaughtered since the first case of the virus was discovered in China on Aug. 3. The fourth and latest case surfaced last week, 1,200 kilometres from the initial discovery.

That’s a small number culled so far, compared to China’s 700 million hogs. China produces more hogs than Canada, the United States and the European Union combined.

But 1,200 km is a big distance for the virus to have travelled in such a short time. Industry officials fear the findings may be just the tip of the iceberg.

“These are still early days,” cautioned Robyn Harte, Manitoba’s swine industry specialist.

But if the disease takes off and 30 to 40 more cases surface, that will be a much bigger story, she said.

“That will impact domestic supply, (China’s) ability to meet consumer demand, and that would push up prices.” There are also fears it could spread to Japan or the Korean Peninsula, she said.

It poses no danger to human health, as humans aren’t susceptible to African swine fever. However, it’s a virulent disease for hogs, hard to kill and easy to spread. There is no vaccine to protect animals from contracting the virus.

Symptoms include fever, internal bleeding, bloody diarrhea and vomiting. Virtually every single animal that contracts the virus dies, Harte said.

It’s not a flu, like the so-called swine flu (H1N1) that struck Canadian herds in 2009, but a fever, and therefore hardier. The virus is generally transmitted by ticks and then spread from animal to animal in pens where they share feed and tend to fight each other.

The source of the African swine fever is under investigation, but speculation is that it came from feral hogs.

China is a huge pork consumer. Pork makes up an estimated 70 to 80 per cent of the protein in people’s diets.

Hog prices to producers are in the dumpster these days, largely due to tariff wars and other factors, such as the uncertainty with the North American Free Trade Agreement. China has slapped a massive tariff on American hogs as part of its trade war with the U.S.

Harte says there has not been an upswing in prices yet to reflect the situation in China. Canada is the third-largest supplier of pork to China, while the EU supplies most of its product.

Even so, “a high tide raises all boats,” Harte said.

While China’s biosecurity has been improving, it is not up to North American standards, and that may make it difficult to contain an outbreak, local officials say.

The other danger is African swine fever spreading into Europe and ultimately North America. The European Union is seeing pockets of African swine fever, particularly in Romania.

“Our biosecurity is fairly robust and specifically designed for these types of foreign animal diseases,” Harte said.

In China, production ranges from large-scale hog barns like in Canada to people’s backyards.

“It could spread quickly and very badly,” said Claude Vielfaure, president of the hog processor HyLife Foods, based in La Broquerie.

“Many people have pigs in their backyards. It’s very different from the production we see in North America,” he said.

China is HyLife’s second-largest market for hogs processed at its plant in Neepawa.

Very little pork from China enters the Canadian market, said Jenelle Hamblin, Manitoba Pork’s manager of swine health programs.

However, whether Chinese product to Canada is quarantined will be up to the federal government, Hamblin said.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca