Vietnam to limit pig sales to China due to disease

HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam will limit pig exports to China from this week as it seeks to prevent a disease from spreading among its swine stock or to its neighbours, the Agriculture Ministry said.

Pigs to be sold to China from Saturday should not come from or be transported via provinces now battling "blue ear" disease, Deputy Agriculture Minister Bui Ba Bong said in a directive seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

The move may trigger price rises in China, which faced record pork prices last year due to shortages following infection by the disease in almost half of China in 2006, leading to the slaughter of about 1 million pigs.

The disease, formally known as Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome, was first recognised in the United States in the mid-1980s. It emerged in Vietnam in June 2007 and outbreaks have since hit various locations across the country.

More than 215,000 pigs -- still less than 1 percent of Vietnam's pig stock -- have been infected so far this year in 10 provinces, and outbreaks are spreading faster in the country's north, the Agriculture Ministry's Animal Health Department said.

Doctors say people can catch the virus from direct contact by hand or eating pork from a sick pig. It causes high fever, still-births, appetite loss, diarrhoea and redness of the skin.

Last September China said that 290,000 pigs there were infected by the disease but that the country was not the source of the disease outbreaks in Vietnam and Myanmar.