A Chinese official denied that China's African swine fever (ASF) epidemic originated with pork imported from Russia, according to a report from The Beijing News on Sunday.
"China has never imported pork from ASF affected countries, which include Russia," Huang Baoxu, official of China Animal Health and Epidemiology Center, said in the China Agriculture Outlook Conference in Beijing on Saturday.
"ASF was spread to Russia in 2007, and China's first ASF case broke out in Shenyang, capital of Northeast China's Liaoning Province, in 2018," Huang said.
New ASF cases were detected in Haikou in South China's Hainan Province on Sunday, together with two other cities identified as affected by ASF on Friday, according to notices posted by China Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
China's mainland provinces are now all affected by ASF, together with Hainan, which is located off China's southern coast, leaving only Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan as the only regions immune from the epidemic, according to data collected by the Global Times.
China's domestic pork production decreased by 0.9 percent year-on-year in 2018 and fell by 5.2 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2019, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
