African swine fever
A viral disease of pigs and wild boar, harmless to humans but almost always fatal to the animal, whose 2018-2019 epidemic in China destroyed a share of the global herd that estimates put between a quarter and a third.
African swine fever is a viral disease of pigs and wild boar, with no vaccine in general use in Europe, that kills nearly every infected animal and forces the culling of affected farms. The case that sets the scale is Chinese. The first outbreak was reported on August 3, 2018, on a farm in Shenyang, Liaoning. Within eighteen months the virus had reached every province. The Chinese herd, on the order of 430 million head in early 2018, fell to around 310 million by late 2019, depending on the series used. Officially reported culls never topped about twelve million: the gap reflects what farmers sold, buried or left to die without reporting it. A study published in Nature Food in 2021 put losses from August 2018 to July 2019 at 0.78% of China's 2019 GDP. Pork prices more than doubled by late 2019, and the shock moved through world markets for meat and feed grains. For an underwriter, ASF is the textbook correlated risk. It hits a whole region at once, the authorities order culls and close markets, and importing countries suspend purchases as soon as a single wild boar tests positive. Compensation for culled animals falls to the state; the private market covers at best the farm's business interruption, with per-event sublimits. Not to be confused with classical swine fever, caused by a different virus, against which vaccines exist.
On September 10, 2020, Germany confirmed its first ASF case in a wild boar in Brandenburg, near the Polish border. No farm was infected. China, the leading market outside the European Union for German pork, still suspended imports within the week, and the price paid to German farmers fell sharply. A business interruption policy triggered by an outbreak on the farm would have paid nothing: the loss came from a trade decision made in Beijing.
ASF, African swine fever, ASF in China, swine fever epidemic
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