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 China and a series of other pork buyers banned imports of German
pork in September 2020 after Germany's first ASF case.
Germany is asking China to accept the "regionalisation concept"
which stops pork imports only from the region of a country where
swine fever has been found instead of a blanket ban on sales from
the whole country.
Negotiations with China are continuing at the level of experts,
Feiler told a press conference.
"These negotiations are proving difficult," Feiler said.
Other states seeking regionalisation agreements with China had so
far not been successful, he added.
"It is important that we continue," he said. "But other countries
have shown their readiness to accept the regionalisation concept and
we are continuing to work towards China also accepting this."
Germany has been successful in containing ASF in a small eastern
region, Feiler added.
Some 2,070 ASF cases have been confirmed in wild boar since the
disease was confirmed in Germany a year ago in the eastern states of
Brandenburg and Saxony along the Polish border. Wild boars wondering
into Germany from Poland spread the disease, which is harmless to
humans but fatal for pigs.
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 "The countermeasures, despite
hard conditions with infection pressure coming
from a wide area in difficult terrain, have
succeeded in restricting the cases to a small
area in Brandenburg and Saxony," Feiler said.
"Apart from three farms inside the ASF
restriction zone we have been able to keep farm
animals free of the disease."
Germany's strategy to counter swine fever
includes building fences along the Polish border
to prevent wild boar entering Germany,
intensified hunting of wild boar and strict
hygiene measures on farms.
Germany's programme to eradicate ASF will be "a
long distance run" and not a sprint, said Thomas
Mettenleiter, president of the Friedrich
Loeffler animal disease scientific institute.
(Reporting by Michael Hogan, editing by David
Evans)
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