HAIKOU, February 14. /TASS/. The Hainan authorities plan to increase the volume of supplies of pigs and pork to the Chinese market, in particular, by increasing the number of livestock in large agricultural households by 2.31 million animals this year, deputy head of the local department of agriculture Mo Zhengjun announced.
According to the official, there are 1,068 big pig farms operating in the region, capable of raising 2.32 million pigs in a year, however, some farms have not returned to work after the New Year holidays, extended due to coronavirus outbreak. Currently, the number of pigs on the island amounts to about 1.58 million which is by 1.97% less than in December 2019.
"Hainan is building another 54 large pig farms. Twenty-seven of them will have more than 10,000 heads, investments in related projects will exceed 6.1 billion yuan (approximately $ 873.3 million — TASS)," Mo Zhenjun noted.
Recently, China has experienced a sharp decline in stock due to an outbreak of African swine fever (ASF), which was first detected in early August 2018 in Liaoning Province in the north-east of the country and spread to other regions, including those bordering with Russia. According to government's data, over 1.2 million animals died in an epidemic in China over the year.
African swine fever virus is an infectious disease with an incubation period of up to two weeks. There have been no cases of human infection before, however, scientists do not exclude such a risk, since the virus can develop unpredictably and an increase in its varieties is possible.