HAMBURG (Reuters) – Five more cases of African swine fever have been confirmed in wild boars in the eastern German region of Brandenburg, Germany’s federal agriculture ministry said on Friday.
The new discoveries bring the total number of confirmed cases to 91 since the first one on Sept. 10. All were in wild animals with no farm pigs affected.
China and other pork buyers banned imports of German pork in September after the first case was confirmed, causing Chinese pork prices to surge and German prices to slump.
But despite the Asian export bans, German pig prices remained stable in past weeks, with more German pork sales taking place inside the European Union.
The German government is in talks with Asian pork importers asking them to impose only regional import bans on areas inside the country where the disease has been discovered and not a blanket national import stop on German pig meat.
(Reporting by Michael Hogan; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
