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African swine fever, a fatal disease of pigs, has been around for decades. Believed to have originated in sub-Saharan Africa, it’s made several visits to other continents, with outbreaks surfacing in Russia, Brazil, and various parts of Europe—where it still maintains a stronghold in wild boar populations.
But it only escalated to what Dirk Pfeiffer calls “the biggest animal disease outbreak ever” when it reached China last August, spreading like wildfire across the world’s largest pig congregations. “There’s so many pigs in China, it was just a matter of time,” says Pfeiffer, a veterinary epidemiologist at the City University of Hong Kong and the UK’s Royal Veterinary College.
The disease not only threatens the world’s largest pork industry, but also the global supply of the blood thinner heparin, most of which is produced by Chinese pigs.
Alarmed, Chinese officials have reportedly culled more than 1.2 million ...
