North Korea May be Attempting to Hide “Pig Ebola” Apocalypse
“Pork accounts for about 80% of North Korea’s protein consumption.”
Legal Insurrection readers may recall that in August, I reported that the world is looking at a potential shortage of bacon and other pork products as African Swine Fever, nicknamed “Pig Ebola,” has spread through Asia.
Presently, North Korea has only reported 22 pig this May from the deadly and highly contagious disease. However, wayward feral pigs caught along its border with South Korea have officials concerned that the rogue nation is hiding an African swine fever disaster.
Five wild boars were found dead in or near border areas separating the two countries this month before being tested positive for the viral haemorrhagic disease, officials in South Korea said. The finding reflects the freedom with which animals roam the 4km-wide buffer zone that divides the nations and creates an involuntary park and refuge for fauna.
It also hints at a spillover of the deadly virus from North Korea, where unofficial reports indicate that the disease is spreading out of control. South Korea has deployed helicopters to disinfect parts of the 250km-long border barrier, near which more than a dozen outbreaks have occurred on farms since the virus was first reported there a month ago.
African swine fever has spread to almost all areas of North Korea, and pigs in the western province of North Pyongan have been “wiped out”, said Ms Lee Hye-hoon, who chairs the National Assembly’s intelligence committee, citing South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
A North Korean defector says that the loss of this major source of protein will hit the North Korean diet hard.
Cho Chunghi fled the state in 2011 after spending a decade working for the government animal disease control program and said: “Pork accounts for about 80% of North Korea’s protein consumption and with global sanctions taking place, it’s going to be hard for the country to find an alternative protein source.
“The virus is extremely destructive as people are now unable to make money through raising pigs, while the country’s economy is restrained.”
He warned that as pigs on individual farms outnumber those on collective ones, it would be almost impossible for Pyongyang to be able to halt the spread, given its resources.
Meanwhile, the highly-anticipated resumption of nuclear disarmament talks between the United States and North Korea ended in another breakdown this weekend.
The working-level negotiations started Saturday afternoon (KST) in the Swedish capital of Stockholm and lasted for about eight hours amid hopes for a possible breakthrough in the dialogue that had been stalled in the wake of the failed Hanoi summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in February. But once again, the two parties failed to narrow their differences on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The North’s chief negotiator Kim Myong-gil announced early Sunday the “breakdown” of the talks in a rare meeting with reporters outside the North Korean embassy.
The failed talks come as a bane to the government here, as a series of peace drives led by President Moon Jae-in will likely be delayed or again come to nothing in the aftermath of the suspended dialogue.
If talks resume “when pigs fly,” then perhaps there will be a summit soon….because North Korea’s pork supply looks like it’s getting angel wings.
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Comments
Waiting for the Norks, or our lamestream media, to blame this squarely on Trump.
Or, for the Reflexive Right to blame it on George Soros.
Communists always lie and hide the truth. Norks are already starving. This is probably an extinction level event.
Communists think starvation is a form of population control.
….whereas, Chinese and Westerners consider killing babies in the womb as a form of population control. Americans, always the Capitalists, have even learned how to make $$$ from selling baby parts.
Not exactly. The Chinese clearly use it to control population growth.
In the west, it’s a matter of convenience, not population control. No one is forced to have an abortion.
“Americans, always the Capitalists, have even learned how to make $$$ from selling baby parts.”
It is illegal to sale “Baby parts”. If you have the evidence it is being done let us know so we can have them arrested.
42 U.S.C. 289g-2 It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration if the transfer affects interstate commerce.
Reimbursement costs associated with the production, transport, or maintenance are allowable.
“Always the capitalists” – I wish as that is the path to prosperity. If you have some other path proven to work, point it out.
Aporkalypse Now.
Is not 25 per cent of our corn production required to be turned into ethanol for cars? Why? Pump oil from the ground, feed corn to pigs. They need the pork, we have an abundance of oil.
Besides, I would bet ramped up corn production does more environmental harm than oil and gas production.
could also be low tech bio attack against south korea.
This is an extraordinarily dangerous disease. South Korea has managed to isolate and destroy pigs that have contracted the disease…barely. But what about Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia that also have feral pigs? Everyone really needs to be working on massive vaccinations. The disease has already been found in the Philippines and Indonesia. Just a matter of time before it gets into the Americas…which also have huge wild hog populations.
There is a vaccine? Could it be administered to wild hogs by dart gun?
No, there’s the *start* of a vaccine, but nothing really wildly effective yet. The problem with attenuated live virus vaccines for ASF is there’s no good way of mangling the live virus enough to induce resistance without leaving it lethal enough to kill the subject anyway. Plus, it’s a horribly complex disease. Still, there’s progress, and hopefully in a few years it will be smashed back into the ground.
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/scientists-race-to-build-vaccine-for-african-swine-fever–66034
Everyone thinks HIV is bad, they’ve seen nothing yet – just wait until this virus jumps over to the human genome! In Asia many villagers live very close to their animals – this is going to devastate certain populations.
We may have some problems here also. Just had a huge blizzard hit the Dakotas and upper midwest. Farmers may lose all their crops.
This is fun, because I was told about that epidemic a year ago by a friend who’s a semi-retired wheat farmer in North Dakota. It came up when we were talking about China’s tariffs on soybeans.
Generally speaking, there is way too little media coverage of agriculture. As farms have gotten more productive and rural areas have depopulated because the farm labor requirements are so minimal, there isn’t as much of an audience with a direct interest in agriculture. People in the cities and towns just assume food.
So no one talks to farmers anymore. This is a bad thing for a number of reasons, one being that because farming has become so scientific and industrial, and the margins so thin, the ones remaining tend to be very smart cookies. My wheat farmer friend is one of them; because of my background and travels, I’ve gotten to hang out with some scary-smart people, and that guy in North Dakota is one of the 10 smartest people I’ve ever known.
So, he told me a year ago about pig ebola. First thing that happens when that hits is the farmers feed them more soybeans. Then the herd collapses and they feed them a lot less. China’s herd is in collapse; the price of pork has increased 14-fold. Ancient Chinese governing principle is that rulers are afraid of starvation. China is now buying record amounts of U.S. pork without any tariffs.
All of this was known a year ago. Trump knew it before he tangled with China. Farmer support for Trump has gone from 71% to 76%.
Just for fun, another story involving him. If you shop at those uber-duber organic stores, you might see “sprouted grain bread.” Do a Google search, and you’ll find the hype. So one day, I bought a loaf and then called my friend and told him what I did. After the laughter died down, he explained.
Wheat sprouts if it gets too wet. The sprouted grain is less nutritious than the dry stuff. It is sold as animal feed. Last week, wheat was going for $5/bushel in North Dakota and sprouted was going for $2.
Sprouted grain is crunchy, and people who don’t know any better equate that with healthier. The opposite is true, but if you’re a canny entrepreneur in say, Brooklyn, selling to sandalistas with high self-regard yet low actual knowledge, you pitch that crunchy sprouted grain story.
By the way: Way back when they first started growing wheat on the Great Plains, some of it was so crunchy that people broke their teeth on bread. Today’s wheat is much better.
End of lessons.
Thanks for the fun read.
Settlers breaking/cracking teeth on bread may be due to poor quality milling practices.
I still find the occasional pit in canned pitted olives and stone fruits.
Could have been. Next time I talk to my friend I’ll ask him. He’ll know. By the way, North Dakota has a pure example of socialism: the North Dakota Mill, founded, owned and operated by that state’s government.
https://www.ndmill.com/index.cfm/about/about-us/
Largest flour mill in the United States. Runs at a profit. Known for the superior quality of the product. People who know about them will have 50-lb sacks shipped to them outside of the state, and those sacks are popular gifts.
The hard winter wheat of the Dakotas is world famous. Artisan bread and pasta. Exported to Italy and other countries that require the finest noodles.
A little more info pending that talk with my friend. I found a really long article about milling in the 1800s, and it said that many plantations produced two grades: a fine grade for flour sold off the farm, and a coarse grade for milled grains consumed on the property. Could be that people chipped their teeth on grain that they milled for their own use?
By the way, before your question, I called him to refresh my memory about the pig ebola (aka “swine flu” — anyone here old enough to recall the swine flu shots of the 1970s?) He said they’d had 17 inches of snow in his part of N.D. (the northeast section, not far from Minnesota.)
I said, “That’s nothing. Call me when you get some real snow.” Last winter, he was a little upset when a bingo game was cancelled on account of the temperature getting to 30 below. When men were men, he said, they only called things off when it got to 40 below.
The camp I was stationed at in the northern part of S. Korea in 1970 lost a KATUSA soldier to haemorrhagic fever. Kind of scary to say the least.
Try this again without the messed up tags:
Soylent Green . . . is made of people!
Protein problem solved.
Barry if you don’t know … I ain’t telling you
Barry if you don’t know … I ain’t telling you
I’d be tempted to say that the people of North Korea coud eat Communist cadre…
“Pig Ebola” – isn’t that rashida tlaib’s street name?