The outbreak of African swine fever in China, first detected last month by authorities there, is accelerating and will almost certainly emerge in other countries in Asia, a regional emergency meeting convened by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) heard today.

African Swine Fever (ASF) was first detected in Asia last year, in an area of Siberia in the Russian Federation. But its arrival in China is a major threat to the swine industry and to the livelihoods of small scale farmers and others along the value chain. China produces half of the world’s pigs – with a current population of some 500-million swine. In just over a month, the virus has been detected in 18 farms or abattoirs in six provinces, in some cases more than one-thousand kilometres apart.