Special Announcement: Second Case of ASF in China

Published by Paul Sundberg at August 16, 2018

Swine Disease Global Surveillance Report

Thursday, August 16, 2018

There is now a second case of African swine fever (ASF) in China. It was found in a slaughterhouse where 30 pigs died of ASF. The slaughterhouse is located in the city of Zhengzhou in the Henan province. The pigs came from Tangyuan district of the city of Jiamusi, in the Heilongjiang province, over 500 miles to northeast of the first reported herd, which was detected approximately two weeks ago.

By road, the distance from the farm to the slaughterhouse is approximately 1,400 miles, travelling through areas with high pig density. The slaughterhouse is a large commercial facility, owned by Shuanghui, part of the WH Group, the world’s largest pork producer.

Government officials are moving quickly to try to isolate the disease. The slaughterhouse has been closed with a no movement zone within a radius of approximately 6 miles and a zone of 2 miles for destroying all pigs.

This news outbreak signals that there may be a number of concerns about the status of ASF in China. The distance between the original detection in Shenyang and this newly identified farm, as well as slaughterhouse, shows that the disease is being transported widely. The areas of concern now involve multiple Chinese provinces and heighten the likelihood of further cases.

4 key locations: Red dot, new ASF outbreak reported in slaughterhouse is located in the city of Zhengzhou in the Henan province; blue: first ASF outbreak reported in a small pig farm in district of Shenbei New, in the province of Liaoning; green dot: farm (owner Wang) located in the Hunnan District, Shenyang city, Liaoning province; purple: Tangyuan district of the city of Jiamusi, in the Heilongjiang province.

The Chinese press is reporting that the outbreak started as early as April of this year. (http://www.chinanews.com/sh/2018/08-15/8600530.shtml) A partial translation is below.

The first ASF case was officially confirmed on Aug 3, 2018 on a small farm (owner Zhang) located in the Shenbei District, Shenyang city, Liaoning province. Further investigations indicated that the owner of the ASF index farm purchased 45 pigs on July 5, 2018 from a farm (owner Wang) located in the Hunnan District, Shenyang city, Liaoning province. Fecal samples collected from Wang’s farm were confirmed ASFV RNA positive by PCR.

Wang said that the last entry of pigs onto the farm occurred on March 24, 2018. There were 100 piglets purchased from Chuanying District, Jilin city, Jilin province. In April, some pigs started to become sick and then died on the Wang farm. Wang did not report the abnormal pig death; instead the remaining live pigs were sold to the Zhang farm in Shenyang and other people. So far, all of the pigs initially from the Wang farm have been tracked and culled. Wang was held in a detention center due to violation of the laws.