Asian pork producers need to redouble efforts to combat African swine fever after Mongolia reported its first outbreak, just five months after the deadly disease was first discovered in China.
“This indicates that it’s very difficult for any country to avoid introduction of the virus,” Dirk Pfeiffer, a professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases and Public Health at the City University of Hong Kong, said in an interview.
The fact that Mongolia has a low pig population density “further strengthens the hypothesis of widespread geographical presence of the virus,” he said.
The outbreak in a second Asian country means that China’s neighbors should intensify efforts to prepare for the disease that has prompted mass pig cullings in China — the world’s biggest hog market.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has already said that the spread of African swine fever to other Asian countries is a near certainty.
Animal health authorities in Asia have increased border surveillance and China has slaughtered more than 900,000 pigs to contain the disease.
With no vaccine to protect animals, researchers say the virus — which can survive for more than a year in dry-cured ham — is a particular risk to countries such as Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar.
The Mongolian outbreak occurred in a “backyard” swine operation in the center of Bulgan region, which borders Russia, according to a post on the World Organization for Animal Health’s Web site dated on Tuesday.
A total of 214 hogs were killed and disposed of after 85 cases of the fever were found at the operation.
More work needs to be done to determine whether the disease arrived in Mongolia from China or eastern Europe, Pfeiffer said.
“No single country can afford the illusion that they can isolate themselves from the regional dynamics of how this virus is being moved around,” Pfeiffer said. “It will get more complicated if and where it gets established in wild pig populations.”
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