Hanoi - Vietnam has culled more than 1.2
million farmed pigs infected with African swine fever, the
government said on Monday, as the virus continues to spread
rapidly in the Southeast Asian country.
Pork accounts for three-quarters of total meat consumption
in Vietnam, a country of 95 million people where most of its 30
million farm-raised pigs are consumed domestically.
The virus was first detected in Vietnam in February and has
spread to 29 provinces, including Dong Nai, which supplies
around 40% of the pork consumed in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's
southern economic hub.
"The risk of the virus spreading further is very high and
the evolution of the outbreak is complicated," the government
said in a statement.
It said many provinces had failed to detect outbreaks and
cull infected pigs properly due to a lack of funds and the space
needed for burying the dead pigs.
The disease, which is harmless to humans but incurable in
pigs, has also spread quickly across neighbouring China.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
in March advised Vietnam to declare the swine fever outbreak as
a national emergency.