Feb 13 (NHK) - A new outbreak of swine fever has been confirmed on a pig farm in Aichi Prefecture, central Japan. It is the third farm in the prefecture to be hit by the highly contagious disease.
Aichi officials announced on Wednesday that hogs on a farm in Tahara City tested positive for the disease. They were testing the animals after the farmer reported the day before that some piglets had died.
The prefecture says it will cull about 1,200 hogs on the farm in an attempt to contain the outbreak. It also plans to ban other farms within a 10-kilometer radius from shipping or moving their pigs.
Aichi Governor Hideaki Omura urged officials in a meeting to take all possible measures to deal with the emergency.
The latest case follows outbreaks of swine fever at two other farms in the prefecture. Aichi officials have already completed the task of culling the pigs and disinfecting the farms.
One of the farms in the earlier outbreak shipped pigs on January 30 to a meat processing plant in Toyohasi City. On the same day, the farm hit by the latest outbreak also shipped pigs to the same meat processing plant. It remains unclear if there is any connection between the two cases.
Swine fever has also spread to facilities in four other prefectures. Pigs from one of the infected farms were shipped to the facilities.
