African Swine Fever Emergency in China
ASF Emergency in China
With the farm and ranch report I'm Rick Worthington.
The severity in the spread of the African Swine Fever Virus is being taken quite serious here in the U.S.. However the problem has become a full blown emergency in China where production losses of 25 to 35 percent have been reported.
The USDA is Greg Icebox says he sees an uptick in Chinese demand for U.S. pork as a result.... "Pork imports from China have been prohibited for a number of years decades because of the disease status with foot mouth and Classical Swine Fever. And so we have though over the years grown our pork exports to China you know they've had a little bit of a downturn here as we negotiated with China. Some of the trade concerns we have between our countries. We're hoping that as part of the negotiations that we provide more opportunities to grow exports and agricultural products and pork would be one of those. But we have seen an uptick in Chinese purchases of pork here recently from the United States. And so we do believe that that is part of the fact that ISAF has affected the Chinese pork supply and pork being an important protein in their diet. We believe that there will continue to be more opportunities for U.S. pork to be able to move into China."
And he says precautions are being taken to keep the virus from entering the United States.
