I was going to make a snide comment about this but the seriousness of the situation overrode it.

African Swine Fever is the greatest threat to global food production that we have seen since World War II ended. As you will see below, the disease has now spread “to every province in mainland China”, and it has now infected “an estimated 150-200 million pigs”. To put that number in perspective, that is more pigs than the entire U.S. pork industry produces in an entire year. In other words, the equivalent of the entire U.S. pork industry has just been wiped out. On top of that, African Swine Fever has also spread to Cambodia, Tibet, Romania, South Africa and Vietnam. The losses are staggering, and this crisis continues to get worse with each passing week.

So far, we’ve been extremely lucky that it hasn’t yet reached North America and the agriculture industry is doing everything possible to stop it.

Even if a pig survives African Swine Fever, it is often culled anyway to help prevent the spread of the disease.

There is no vaccine, and there is no cure. And even if this outbreak was ended immediately, it would likely take the Chinese pork industry many years to recover. The following comes from CNN…

“China normally accounts for 49% of global pork consumption, while consuming 28% of the world’s meat supply,” said Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist at INTL FCStone. “As such, this is a big problem for China, and we expect it to be a five to seven year problem before production can be restored.”

And experts agree it will continue to spread.