The Philippines, which is also the world’s seventh-largest pork importer, is the latest Asian nation to be hit by African swine fever, despite efforts to protect its USD 5 billion hog industry that included a ban on pork imports.
Apart from Hungary, the Philippines’ import ban covers pork and pork-based products from Germany, South Korea, Belgium, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Moldova, South Africa, Zambia, and Mongolia.
Agriculture officials suspect the virus was brought to local farms via food scraps, or swill, from hotels and restaurants fed to pigs, or from imported pork products, reuters.com reported.