Thailand halts pork imports from Laos
ASF has reached Laos last week and China and Thailand is the first country that reacted to the situation by placing a ban on pork imports from the neighboring country for 90 days.
The ban would cover live pigs and carcasses in an effort to prevent the disease from spreading into Thailand, said the Thai Department of Development of Livestock.
Laos reported last week 7 cases of ASF in villages near Saravanne that led to the death of 973 pigs. Los is the sixth country in the region that gets hit by African swine fever in the last 10 months. By now, the disease has spread from China to Mongolia, Vietnam, Cambodia and North Korea. Experts are even talking about a food security crisis in Asia as the region is vulnerable at biosecurity threats and China is expected to lose by the end of the year 30% of its national pig inventory, which accounts for almost 15% of the global swineherd.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MOAC) recently published an estimate on economic damage that would occur if the ASF virus reaches Thailand. MOAC estimates that if the disease infects 30 percent of the swine population, the economic damage will total 21.17 billion baht ($672 million). In the scenario of a 50 percent swine infection rate, the economic damage climbs to 35.28 billion baht ($1.1 billion) while in the 80 percent infection rate scenario the economic damage reaches 56.45 billion baht ($1.8 billion).
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