Stopping Pig Black Death – African Swine Fever. Protection through detection (Arabic Edition)

For many, looking back at 2018 might bring back memories of South Korea's Winter Olympic Games or the British royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, but for pig farmers in China, the year was marked by a single event: the arrival of African swine fever (ASF). That year, the disease — once endemic to only sub-Saharan Africa — broke out among Chinese piggeries, resulting in the death or culling of over a quarter of the world's domestic pig population. A year after its appearance, ASF was estimated to have directly cost China over a trillion yuan (US $141 billion) according to the dean of the College of Animal Science and Technology at China Agricultural University in Beijing, and caused the country's pork prices to spike by 85 per cent.