China reported a new African swine fever case on a farm with nearly 20,000 pigs on Monday, the largest farm yet to report the highly contagious disease in the world’s top pork producer.
The new case, one of numerous to be reported in northeast Liaoning province in recent days, underlines the escalating threat to the country’s $1 trillion pig industry from the disease despite a slew of initial measures imposed to curb its spread.
Pig prices have plunged in China’s northeast after farmers were unable to transport their herds out of infected provinces, while prices in the south have surged.
Farms owned by large companies typically have stronger biosecurity, or measures to guard against the spread of the disease, than China’s hundreds of thousands of small farms, and have until now not reported any outbreaks.
But one of three new cases confirmed in Liaoning on Monday occurred on a 19,938-head farm, according to a statement published on the website of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
