The Cold War Roots of the African Swine Flu Plague
China Matters
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<i>[This is the script of a segment on African Swine Flu that I did for Newsbud China Watch in July 2018. Things have gotten worse since then, with the virus spreading to South Korea.]</i><br />
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</i><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
As the US Beltway obsesses on its China threat calculations, the global
pig industry and the global agricultural economy are being transformed by a
lethal virus: African Swine Fever, or ASF.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
ASF is not transmittable to humans but the current form of the virus is
absolutely lethal to pigs and highly contagious, and it is sweeping through
China.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Chinese pig-raising industry is being remade as the government has
quarantined districts and banned shipments of pigs in order to contain the
virus.<span> </span>Chinese pig production will drop
up to 40% as pig farmers slaughter hogs they can’t ship or sell.<span> </span>Since pig farming relied on imported soybean
meal for feed, and feed imports are going to drop, China’s ability to import
massive amounts of American agricultural products—a key source of Chinese
leverage in the trade war—is under threat.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/10/killer-hog-disease-a-dire-situation-in-china-stoking-fears-in-us.html">Killer
hog disease now a ‘dire situation’ in China that could lead to higher global
prices</a></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But on the other hand China will be buying more U.S. pork—though
there’s no way the U.S. can fill the PRC pork hole by itself—so there’s that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-14/deadly-pig-disease-to-reshape-global-soybean-markets-for-years">A
Deadly Pig Disease is Reshaping Global Soybean Markets</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The virus is extremely robust and can survive outside of a live host
and inside pork products—including the animal feed in which most pig blood
shows up—and the threat of swine fever from China to Taiwan’s pork industry has
become a political talking point for the anti-PRC Taiwanese government and
media. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Even the 2019 World Pork Expo in Des Moines, Iowa in the United States
was canceled out of an abundance of caution as the organizers put it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
It looks like the Chinese pig industry, which has almost 700 million
hogs and produces half the world’s pork, will turn its back on the small mom
and pop producer that formed the backbone of the industry, in favor of massive
industrial facilities that can invest the money in the procedures and equipment
to manage the biohazard—and also produce gigantic reeking lagoons of pig
excrement.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/20/north-carolina-hog-industry-pig-farms">A
million tons of feces and an unbearable stench: life near industrial pig farms</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
That’s what progress smells like in the pig industry.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Chinese government is pushing the narrative that it’s got a handle
on the epidemic, but according to a US delegation that visited in March, that’s
not the case:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span>“African swine fever is very bad.
There are reported cases all across the country, but many cases are not
reported. They have found the disease in sausage, in processed meat, and in
dumplings. Although the government repeatedly tells consumers that it has
nothing to do with health of the human, people are still concerned. Pork
consumption is going down.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span>African swine fever is
uncontrollable. It has spread from China to Vietnam and will likely soon be in
Thailand, South Korea, and Japan. The situation in China is much worse than
four months ago</span>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="https://www.agriculture.com/news/livestock/china-says-african-swine-fever-is-under-control-but-nobody-believes-it">Why
you can’t believe what China says about African Swine Fever</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Well, where did this menace come from?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
African Swine Flu came into China from the north—from Russia.<span> </span>Before that it ravaged the Baltic states and
Poland, leading to the restructuring of the pig industry up there.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Before that, it came from the Caucasus, and the trail ends—or
starts—in the nation of Georgia.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
And maybe African Swine Fever was held in a government lab in Georgia
and got out with a little help from the violently anti-Russian government of
Mikhel Saakashvili.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Back in 2012, when ASF was just a little regional blip that had been
roiling the Caucasus for five years, the Russian consumer protection agency
blamed Georgia for releasing the virus:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swine-fever-russia/russia-blames-georgia-for-swine-fever-in-its-south-idUSBRE8380EI20120409">Russia
blames Georgia for swine fever in its south</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<span>“ASF came to us from Georgia. First,
of course, to Ossetia, and then to the Krasnodar and Stavropol regions. There
are signs that this situation is artificially injected.<span> </span>It is economic sabotage.”</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Russians might know more than a little about African Swine Flu.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The African Swine Fever that has made its way from Georgia through
Russia to the Baltics and Poland and now to China and Asia is genetically
distinct from the previous outbreak, which was traced to exchanges between
Portugal and its Angolan colony in the 1950s.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Georgian outbreak that occurred in 2007 is related to a version of
the virus first identified in southeast Africa in the 1970s.<span> </span>To be specific, Mozambique and Zambia, with
Mozambique a major Soviet client at the time.<span>
</span>Soviet agricultural experts worked extensively on aid projects in
Mozambique.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Maybe Soviet scientists collected some samples of the local swine fever
variant with hopes of developing a vaccine, the as yet unattainable holy grail of
ASF researchers.<span> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But maybe the Soviet bureaucracy had a better idea and the samples were
transferred to the Soviet bioweapons program to be genetically modified for
increased lethality and put into the arsenal.<span>
</span>It’s known that by the 1980s the Soviet Union developed a
second-generation ASF bioweapon in its so-called “Ekology” program for agricultural
warfare.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="http://www.oie.int/eng/BIOTHREAT2015/Presentations/5_ray_zilinskas_PP_15.pdf">The
Use of Animal Pathogens as Biological Weapon Agents Throughout Recent History</a></span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
And maybe some of that engineered African Swine Flu was held in Georgia
when Georgia was a piece of the Soviet Union and part of the Soviet biological
warfare system producing anti-livestock biological weapons as well as
veterinary vaccines at multiple facilities.<span>
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="MsoHyperlink"><a href="https://www.nti.org/learn/countries/georgia/">NTI Overview -- Georgia</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
And maybe some of that ended up in the labs of independent post Soviet Georgia
under the administration of pro-American Russia hating dingbat entrepreneur
Mikhel Saakashvili and somehow found its way into the wild, well onto the hog
farms of Russia and its allies.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
So, is the catastrophe in Eurasian pig-raising actually blowback from
the Soviet biological weapons program engineered by <span> </span>Mikhel Saakashvili?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Could be.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span>And consider this.<span> </span>After the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S.
military didn’t help the government of newly independent Georgia destroy its
stocks of dangerous pathogens; it helped preserve them…through the establishment
of Georgia’s repository for dangerous pathogens, the bizarrely named Pathogen
Asset Control System, which is now maintained at a US funded facility in Tbilsi,
the Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span>Think about that as you chew on your
pork chop.</span></div>
<i>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</i><br />
<i> </i>