World News for Students of English

21-05-2019 07:00

Last August, people reported the virus of African Swine fever in China, but there have been 129 outbreaks in the country as of last week.

By the end of the year, China expects to lose about one-third of its pigs – 1 million pigs have died so far. There is no vaccine or cure against the disease and once a pig catches it, it is going to die. Some pig farmers even had to slaughter their healthy pigs to stop the spread of the virus. The virus has already spread to Mongolia, Vietnam and Cambodia where around 95,000 pigs have died.

China is the world’s largest pork producing country, and the massive hit to the pork industry is already creating a ripple effect worldwide. For example, the soy bean market expects to fall because farmers in China will not need as much for pig feed.

Difficult words: outbreak (an epidemic, when a lot of people or animals get ill), cure (medicine that makes a disease or sickness stop), ripple effect (things which happen because/after something happens).

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