One little piggy went to market, one little piggy got sick, one little piggy got culled —
…and joined 40 percent of China’s little piggies that went wee-wee-wee all the way to burial pits.

During the past 19 months, the world’s largest pork market lost almost half of its pigs to an illness that went unreported and unchecked, and is now crossing borders threatening livestock elsewhere in Asia and the world.

Global worries about the coronavirus as a global pandemic are just the latest public-health scare that took flight in China. The African Swine Fever has run rampant in the People’s Republic since 2018 and has devastated the country’s pork production and markets.

The collapse of oil prices and demand, the wildly volatile stock market, and the social disruption across America due to the Coronavirus pandemic are all serious. So is any global threat to food stocks.

Pork is a staple meat for the Chinese and a primary source of protein in the People’s Republic of China. The bad news? The hog stock has collapsed, and the pig population is decimated. There is little to do about this immediately in a country where pork production is done in conditions dominated by small farms and backyard pigsties. Industrialized production is not widespread. READ MORE