African swine fever mutates, heightened biosecurity measures set to be put in place

A pig-killing disease that has wiped out almost a billion pigs worldwide has mutated, establishing new variants.

Australia’s chief vet Mark Schipp said the new variant could have been established through the use of an illegal vaccine.

“As with any virus, we expect that there will be mutations and evolution of the virus in new environments, and it may be that this is a natural variation,” he said.

“But the deletions that we’re seeing in this virus are the same deletions that are being used in the development of vaccines.”

African Swine…