Chinese Gang Arrested for Selling Fake Swine Fever Vaccine

Gang Selling Fake African Swine Fever Vaccine To Pig Farmers Are Arrested By China police

A “criminal gang” accused of selling fake vaccines to pig farmers has been arrested in China. It was supposed to cure African swine fever, a disease that has devastated the country’s pig population over the last two years.

The vaccine offered by the group was an out-of-date drug intended to treat a poultry disease according to this report by SCMP (the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper).

The group had removed the original label. They claimed it was a “trial vaccine” to cure African swine fever, according to the Legal Daily (a Chinese state newspaper).

According to SCMP, a pig farmer in Sichuan (a province in southwestern China, ~1,500 km southwest of Beijing) bought the fake vaccine last year to protect his herd. However, more than 2000 of his pigs still died of African swine fever.

Furthermore, the police have arrested a group of seven suspects for selling the counterfeit vaccines to pig farmers. Overall, the group caused losses of over 18 million yuan (US$2.5 million), says the article.

Luc Mercer

Luc Mercer is a pseudonym, used for professional reasons. The journalist behind it spent more than thirty years in daily news at a major national news organization, with international assignments early in his career. He is now retired. News of the New World is his record of events that are documented, verifiable, and largely absent from the news cycles he spent three decades watching. He writes what happened, who was responsible, and what the primary sources say — nothing else. More in the About page and the Editorial Standards.