African swine fever: the latest thing NOT being talked about

Moon of Alabama describes this as an 'eccentric' website. That is a reasonable description

Mysterious Deadly Virus 
Rampaging Across World 
Censored By Facebook 
Shutting Down Website 
Warning Of Extinction Event 

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers

A troubling new Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) report circulating in the Kremlin today expounding on Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warning that no country in the world is safe from US sanctions, grimly notes that America’s global efforts to stamp out and censor by every means possible their peoples from knowing true things, is a power that’s now been extended to their giant social media site Facebook—an actual arm of the American government set up by the US Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency as a data mining project to keep under tight surveillance their nation’s citizens—and who have just unpublished for no stated reason whatsoever The Siberian Times—a heretofore never controversial and non-political website published in Novosibirsk-Siberia that near exclusively publishes nature articles relative to their Arctic region—two of whose most recent ones, though—titled “Poppies, Dandelions And Daisies Bloom In Never Before Seen Arctic Oases” and “Northern Reindeer That Roamed Taymyr Peninsula Are At The Brink Of Extinction”— were cited in a document prepared by the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Supervision (ROSSELKHOZNADZOR) which gravely warned that the ancient virus that wiped out hundreds-of-millions of wooly mammoths and other Arctic species has now reemerged in the melting tundra—is a virus currently rampaging across the world and warned to kill 25% of the pig population—and when examined by scientist-researchers from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT), saw them fearfully reporting that the pig feces they examined contained a “mysterious newly discovered virus that DEFIES evolution and current scientific understanding”.  [Note: Some words and/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words/phrases having no exact counterpart.]

A pig disease is a GLOBAL DISEASE affecting every part of our world’s ecosystem

According to this report, with the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) now warning that no country in the world is immune from being hit by this deadly animal virus, the greatest danger posed by this mysterious virus exterminating the world’s pig population is not to these animals themselves, but to human beings—specifically because pigs are a “Mixing Vessel” for all types of influenza viruses—most particularly because of their interactions with birds who are the reservoir for all known influenza A subtypes—and in simple terms means that influenza viruses ingested by pigs from their chicken, duck and/or turkey farm flock neighbors—as well as migratory birds or other animal species, to include human beings—undergo a process of recombining with viruses already existing within the pig—the result of which creates entirely new, never before seen influenza viruses—the worst of which attack human beings who have no protection against them—and best exampled by the 1918 Flu Pandemic that struck an estimated 500 million people— or one-third of the world's population—killing at least 50 million worldwide, with about 675,000 of these deaths occurring in the United States.

In a measure designed to calm the fears of peoples the world over, this report continues, world experts are claiming that this pig apocalypse is being caused by a disease called the African Swine Fever Virus—a virus that appears to have evolved around 1700 AD—whose first outbreak was retrospectively recognized as having occurred in 1907 after it was first described in 1921 in Kenya—but in reality isn’t a single virus at all—as African Swine Fever actually is nothing more than a catch-all phrase used to describe thousands of viruses constantly mixing and recombining within pigs—and is why no vaccines have ever been produced to stop it.

With scientists now warning that 25% of our world’s pig population are under threat of death, this report details, the spread of this mysterious virus across Asia is now unstoppable—thus causing South Korea to deploy military drones and snipers to protect themselves from wild pigs trying to enter their country from North Korea—extreme military measures Russia is preparing to deploy after discovering wild Chinese pigs have infiltrated the country—and will no doubt soon occur in the United States after new evidence shows this mysterious virus may have now spread to North America.      

With pork prices the world over now soaring as millions of pigs die because of this mysterious virus, this report concludes, fears are now growing that a global meat shortage is about to strike—a shortage fast bearing down on the world’s top three pork producing nations China, the European Union and the United States—and which today sees President Donald Trump rapidly working to protect his nation and its peoples by his establishing new rules to speed pork production before his country’s pigs succumb to this apocalypse so their valuable meat can be saved—but beyond all belief and logic to the grave threat their nation is facing, are rules Trump’s deranged socialist enemies are suing to prevent coming into force—thus proving the fact, once again, that if Trump cured cancer and all diseases, these demented socialists would call for his impeachment overthrow because he put doctors out of work.

How bad is African swine fever for the pork supply crisis in China?

Is the pork crisis more severe than US-China trade war?

Global Voices,
18 October, 2019

The project Chinese Cross-Border Question and Answer, sponsored by the Hong Kong NGO Culture and Media Education Foundation, reports on common concerns from Chinese communities in mainland China and abroad. The following post was originally written in Chinese and published on various websites, including inmediahk.net and matters.news. It's republished by Global Voices under a partnership agreement.

In September, just weeks before the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the People's Republic of China, the Chinese government began releasing strategic reserves of frozen pig meat to meet the demand for pork in its domestic market. The measure came after an epidemic of African swine fever killed a huge portion of China's pig population, which caused a shortage in the pork supply. Some even went so far as to comment that Beijing sees the current pork supply crisis as far more severe than the Hong Kong protests and the U.S-China trade war.

The Cross-Border Q&A team explained the scale of the crisis and its political implication in question and answer format.

Q: How big is China’s pork market?

A: China’s demand for pork meat makes up nearly half of the world's total output. For an average Chinese family, pork accounts for two thirds of their meat consumption, and on average, a Chinese person consumes 120 pounds of pork annually. The whole country consumes annually 700 million pig stock. China is almost self-sufficient in terms of pork supply. In 2016, imported pork was equal to 4 percent of the country’s domestic consumption. But this figure was equal to 26 percent of the world’s export output.

Q: How did the African swine fever (ASF) spread to China? Why did it spread throughout the whole country so quickly?

A: There is no official explanation coming from Chinese authorities on the question yet. Related discussions online were censored quickly. However, Dirk Pfeiffer, expert on animal health and epidemiology believed that ASF originated from smuggled pork coming from Russia. In March 2017, there was an outbreak in Irkutsk, Serbia. The city is just 1000 kilometers away from China. ASF is commonly spread across countries through pig feed which is composed of uncooked food scraps that are infected with the virus.

In general, small pig farms are more vulnerable to ASF. In 2017, 90 percent of China’s pig farms were small in scale and they produced one third of the country’s pork supply. In most of the cases, small pig farms fed human leftover food to pigs and they did not have an epidemic control system.

However, big pig farms in China also have outbreaks as well. This may be due to the failure to follow epidemic control protocol as pointed out by Caixin investigative report.

According to the official report, the first ASF outbreak happened in August 2018 in Shenyang in northeastern China. As opposed to other countries, the Chinese outbreak was not confined to a geographical location but quickly spread to other provinces.

An investigative report from The Initium traced the reasons behind the spread of ASF epidemic to the selling of inflicted pigs in the market, the inappropriate dumping of dead pigs and the transportation of livestock across provinces.

Q: How serious is the African swine flu epidemic?

A: According to official data in September, China had killed more 100 million pigs within one year. The total output of pork had dropped about one third of the total average. But this figure does not reflect reality as many small pig farmers did not file reports to the agricultural authority. In fact, in July, the official report stated that only 1.16 million pigs had been culled. The figure was amended after the central government announced an emergency state of pork supply. Unofficial estimation of inflicted pigs was up to 200 million.

The World Organization of Animal Health's report on ASF indicated the Chinese outbreak has spread to nearby countries including Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines and South Korea.

Q: What are the measures taken by China to control ASF from spreading? Are they effective? Is the epidemic under control now?

A: China’s ASF epidemic control system is not really difficult from other countries. It has an epidemic report and compensation system for sculled pigs. However, quite often, pig farmers complained that they did not receive full compensation and hence some did not file reports to the authorities.

China also banned the transportation of pigs across provinces since August 2019. Some local governments had banned pig farms near urban areas and the number of outbreaks from June-July 2019 was lowered. However, as the central government announced the emergency state of pork supply, many pig farms were re-opened.

The Chinese Academy of Agriculture Science announced in September 2019 that it had made significant progress in developing a vaccine. However animal experts were not optimistic as the virus could mutate in the process.

Dirk Pfeiffer pointed out animal epidemic control is not just about the animal, it is about people and whether the pig farmers have epidemic control awareness. It is also about the system, such as whether or not the media could effectively monitor the authorities in releasing the compensation and inform the public about the virus during the early stages of the outbreak.

Q: Why some China-watchers commented that the pork crisis in China is more severe than Hong Kong protests and China-U.S trade war?

A: This August, the market price of pork was raised by about 46.7 percent. In some regions, the price almost doubled. Even if the government was able to control the price, people would not find pork in the markets. On the internet, a large number of videos appeared mocking the rocketing pork prices and the issue replaced the Hong Kong protests and the US-China trade war as the top search terms on social media. People were particularly outraged by the spread of propaganda which stated that eating less pork makes people healthier.

Chinese vice premier Hu Chunhua took the issue of pork supply as a crisis which could undermine social stability and hence ordered local governments to help pig farmers re-open their farms. The central government also decided to release the strategic reserves of pork to make sure that the supply of pork be no less than 95 percent of the average supply during the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the People's Republic of China.

The strategic pork reserve system was established in the 1970s to stabilize domestic meat prices during emergency times, such as natural disasters and wars. China has about 100 thousand tons of frozen pork reserves.

Moreover, China announced on September 13 that the country would take out soy beans and pork from the additional tariff list. Earlier, on September 1, China had announced a 72 percent tariff on U.S imported pork and Chinese meat traders were forced to cancel their orders. As the 70th anniversary of the PRC was approaching, the Chinese government took a U-turn. As China defines human rights as people’s rights to happiness, the issue of pork supply, which has affected people's dining table is hence viewed as more important than the Hong Kong protests.

Below is a video showing how people were fighting over a piece of pork in a supermarket back in August: