The Research Lead with Agri-Food Economic Systems suggests, African Swine Fever is a potential game changer when it comes to the Canadian pork sector.
An Agri-Food Economic Systems Agri-Food Policy Note looks at retaliatory duties levied by China on U.S. soybeans, by China and Mexico on U.S. pork and African Swine Fever in China.
Agri-Food Economic Systems Research Lead Dr. Al Mussell says African Swine Fever is such a dangerous and ominous pig disease, one of our priorities in Canada first and foremost is to make sure that we don’t get African Swine Fever.
On African Swine Fever the best information seems to be at this point that the biggest impacts so far are probably being felt from transportation restrictions that China has put in place to try and regionally contain African Swine Fever. I don’t know that we’ve been hit by the mass mortalities that are possible from this disease.
The other aspect being, our experience in Canada, we’ve seen PRRS, we’ve seen Circovirus, we’ve seen PED, we’ve seen other pig diseases but, for the most part, these are growing pig diseases or they’re little pig diseases. African Swine Fever will kill sows. It’s indiscriminate, it’s lethal. When you knock out sows it takes far longer to recover so one of the things we watch in 2019 is whether there’s signals in China that they’re starting to get hit with heavy mortalities rather than the market disruption being primarily these transportation restrictions.
~ Dr. Al Mussell, Agri-Food Economic Systems
Dr. Mussell says China, the largest pork producer in the world has African Swine Fever. He says Canada is more dependant on pork exports than anyone so it would be absolutely devastating if Canada got African Swine Fever and there is an awareness of that and some coordinated effort is beginning.
