Name: Why the spread of African swine fever is a human crisis I FT
Uploaded: 2020-03-20T00:21:56.000Z
Duration: 2 min 49 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

African swine fever is an infectious disease that kills pigs, but it's proving to be a human crisis of a different kind and economic one.

The disease has already caused the deaths of more than six million pigs, according to Most Conservative estimate.

It's now disrupting agriculture and meet in ways will be feeling.

For years, hog farmers have been wiped out across Asia.

Consumers in the hardest hit markets, led by trying in Vietnam, are eating less pork and switching to other meats.

And while Asia has legions of loyal meat eaters, the diseases impact could help fuel another global trend.

The switch away from meat and toward vegetable based proteins and meat substitutes.

African swine fever isn't dangerous to humans, but experts warn against eating meat from diseased animals because the disease could be transmitted if hogs air exposed to infected me and feed containing food scraps, as its name suggests.

African swine fever originated in Africa but has been reported for years in Europe, too reached China in August 2018 experts believe, from Russia it a jump to Mongolia by January of this year, Vietnam and February Cambodian march and by October in the Philippines.

It's now present in much of the continent, and it's even been reported in North Korea, Asia's most closed country, the Paris based Organization for Animal Health describes the outbreak is one of the biggest crises to head global livestock in decades.

About 1/4 of the world's hogs have died either from the disease or in calls.

In addition to killing their infected animals, Asian farmers have been selling uninfected ones at any price, even pigs that weren't fully grown.

This has caused the price of pork to soar and other meats to as consumers switch their eating habits, fueling inflation.

This year, in both China and Vietnam, there have been other ripple effects, too.

Prices for corn and soybeans, both used in feed, have fallen.

Meanwhile, earnings at some companies that raise hogs or produce pork have tanked.

African swine fever has also altered the global meat trade, possibly permanently.

With China now importing more foreign pork than ever before, the crisis reaches right across the globe, toe western markets and companies in the form of rising meat prices and shifting demand slow to reacted first.

 Officials across Asia are now working hard to contain African swine fever, and markets have adjusted to the shock. 