Vietnam has culled more than 2.5 million pigs to contain the spread of African swine fever, which can infect every province in the country, a spokesman for the country's agriculture ministry said on Tuesday, June 18.
According to Nguyen Van Long, head of the epidemiology of the Vietnam Animal Health Department, the lethal virus for pigs was first detected in February and has since spread to farms in 58 of the 63 provinces of the country.
A second senior official in the department said it was “only a matter of time” before the disease spreads to all 63 provinces. The official refused to name himself because he was not authorized to speak with the media.
In March, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) recommended Vietnam to declare an emergency in connection with the outbreak of African swine fever.
However, Nguyen Van Long said Vietnam will not yet “declare the outbreak an emergency in the country, since the virus is harmless to humans and the outbreak does not pose a threat to national security.”
In Vietnam, a country with a population of 95 million, pork accounts for three quarters of the total meat consumption and most of the 30 million farmed pigs are consumed domestically.
The country's pork production is estimated at about 94 trillion dongs (5.5 billion US dollars), and it accounts for almost 10 percent of the agricultural sector in Vietnam.