China's Sichuan province becomes 18th to report African swine fever

[November 16, 2018]  BEIJING (Reuters) - China's agricultural ministry confirmed on Friday the first outbreak of deadly African swine fever in the southwest province of Sichuan, the country's top pig-producing region, raising the likelihood of a major impact to pork supplies in coming months.

The highly contagious disease was discovered on a farm of 40 pigs in Yibin city, in Sichuan's southeast, making it the 18th province or municipality to report an outbreak of African swine fever since it was first detected in China in early August.

"With the new case in Sichuan, all major pig production provinces have now fallen. The situation is very severe," said Yao Guiling, an analyst with consultancy China-America Commodity Data Analytics.

China is the world's top pork producer and slaughters around 700 million pigs a year. Sichuan produced almost 66 million last year, according to official data, more than any other province.

Sichuan is also the province with the highest per capita consumption of pork in China at 36 kg (79 pounds), according to data from the National Statistics Bureau.

Provincial authorities last week in Sichuan issued a ban on the import of all live hogs and hog products from other regions in a bid to keep the disease out.

But Yibin is close to Sichuan's borders with Chongqing municipality and Guizhou province, both of which have already reported outbreaks

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