Month: April 2021

If you’re aching for a look at what post-Covid life in the U.S. should eventually look like – assuming clueless politicians and double-maskers don’t seek to wield supreme executive power over our daily lives ad infinitum – you shouldn’t have to look much further than Gibraltar. 

Due to its small size, the U.K. territory already has 85% of its adults vaccinated. It’s just one of a handful of places in the world to have vaccinated a majority of its public, according to the Wall Street Journal, who profiled the country this week.

The country has a population of just 34,000 and has vaccinated 98% of adults over 60 years old. It hasn’t had a Covid case since April 8 and one of its vaccination centers closed at the end of March. The country has embarked on a plan called “Operation Freedom”, which is a plan to fully re-open its society. 

 Albert Stagnetto, director of a family chain of tobacco and liquor stores told The Journal: “I walked out of my flat and put my mask on and then remembered that I didn’t have to do that anymore.”

“You are seeing people greet each other in the street, shaking hands, hugging for the first time in months. People are smiling,” he continued. When his family got together for a meal for the first time in months, he said: “It was like being back in normality, but it gave you a false sense of what was going on in the world. It was as if Covid hadn’t happened.”

Schools, businesses and restaurants are all open. The country still only requires masks in a few places, like buses and healthcare centers. 

Samantha Sacramento, Gibraltar’s health minister, commented: “We thought we might encounter difficulty in the [vaccine] take-up, but the actual end result was the opposite. People were calling us up complaining that they hadn’t been called yet.”

72 year old local historian Tito Vallejo just saw four of his grandchildren for the first time in four months. He said: “They are at that sort of age where they grow and change overnight. It’s only been a short time but still I have noticed they’ve grown since I saw them.”

Gibraltar is a self-governing British Overseas Territory. The country is comprised of “a mix of Italians, Spaniards, Maltese and North Africans.” The country remains on edge due to its proximity to Spain, where only 8% of the population has been vaccinated so far. 71 year old Tony Cruz said: “I won’t feel completely confident until everyone else in Spain and elsewhere are vaccinated.”

23 year old Leandro Gonzalez lives in a Spanish town and works in a Gibraltar hair salon. He says reactions have still been mixed: “It’s 50-50 between the people who still want to keep their distance and wash their hands a lot, and those who want to hug you and kiss you.”

He continued: “My mind changes every day. As soon as I cross into Spain, everything changes: People wear masks, they keep their distance. Every time I cross I must also change how I behave.”

Gibraltar had about 4,300 confirmed Covid cases and 94 deaths, almost all in January and February of this year as virulent strains from the U.K. and Spain hit the country. 

The U.S., for comparison, has vaccinated about 37% of all adults. For the U.K., that number drops to about 26%. 

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

A Christian pastor in the UK was arrested by police after a member of the public reported him for the “homophobic” comment of saying that marriage was between a man and a woman.

Yes, really.

The incident occurred outside Uxbridge Station in west London. A video clip shows the elderly pastor being confronted by police and forcefully handcuffed before being led away.

“I wasn’t making any homophobic comments, I was just defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman. I was only saying what the Bible says – I wasn’t wanting to hurt anyone or cause offence,” said John Sherwood, who has been a pastor for 35 years.

“I was doing what my job description says, which is to preach the gospel in open air as well as in a church building,” he added.

Sherwood was arrested under the Public Order Act, for using “abusive or insulting words” that cause “harm” to another person after a member of the public flagged down officers snitched on him.

Although the pastor was released without charge after spending a night in jail he is still under investigation by the Crown Prosecution Service and could be charged at a later date.

“When the police approached me, I explained that I was exercising my religious liberty and my conscience,” he added.

“I was forcibly pulled down from the steps and suffered some injury to my wrist and to my elbow. I do believe I was treated shamefully. It should never have happened.”

The UK is notorious for hate crime laws where authorities will investigate supposed “hate incidents” if the “victim” merely perceives themselves to have been victimized.

Earlier this year, we highlighted how officers in Merseyside took part in an electronic ad campaign outside a supermarket which claimed “being offensive is an offence.”

In 2019, UK police investigated the potential “hate crime” of a transgender woman being turned down for a porn role because she still has a penis.

A video published by the UK government Home Office last year also suggested that insulting someone’s appearance now constitutes a “hate crime,” despite this not being the law.

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The British government’s effort to create a digital “vaccine passport” app has officially been embraced by the UK’s former Continental partners.

As the EU scrambles to implement a vaccine-passport system that will enable tourists from wealthy vaccinated countries (like the US and UK) to flock to beaches in Greece and Spain over the summer, British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps revealed in a TV interview Thursday that he will be able to give details on which countries have made it on to the UK’s “green list” “in the next couple of weeks”.

The introduction of the UK’s “Green List” follows a series of US State Department Travel Advisories that placed 80% of the world’s countries on the highest level travel advisory. But while the US advisory carries no restrictions, the UK’s “green list” will feature all the countries where Britons can travel without being required to quarantine upon their return (though they will still need to be tested for COVID-19 upon their return).

“…in the next couple of weeks, I’ll be able to tell you about which countries will have made it into the traffic light system and that ‘green’ list in particular are the countries where you’ll be able to go to without needing to quarantine on your return.

“You will still need to take a pre-departure test and one test on your return.

“I think people are getting very used to testing now, not least because we provide testing up to twice a week for everyone in the country right now. So I don’t think a test itself is a big deal.

Shapps also confirmed an NHS app will be used to allow Britons to demonstrate whether they have had a COVID jab, or tested negative for the virus, before traveling abroad.

“It will be the NHS app that is used for people when they book appointments with the NHS and so on, to be able to show you’ve had a vaccine or that you’ve had testing,” he added.

“I’m working internationally with partners across the world to make sure that system can be internationally recognised.”

Government sources clarified the app would not be the NHS COVID app – currently used to “check in” to venues such as pubs and restaurants for contact-tracing purposes – but would instead be the NHS app used to book general appointments.

Shapps added that he was awaiting data from the government’s Joint Biosecurity Center, which is necessary to state which countries would be deemed “green”, “amber” or “red” under the traffic light system.

He also reiterated that there was a need to be “very cautious” about allowing Britons to freely travel abroad again.

“Beyond our shores we are seeing the highest levels of coronavirus that we have seen so far in the entire pandemic, right now,” he added.

“So we do need to make sure we do this very, very carefully – we don’t want to throw away the lockdown, we don’t want to throw away our remarkable rollout in this country of the vaccination.

Meanwhile, European nations are eager to welcome British tourists as they hope this summer will see a significant improvement over last year. Portugal’s ambassador to the UK, Manuel Lobo Antunes, told Sky News he was “hopeful” British travelers would be able to return to Portugal by the middle of next month.

Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The British establishment likes to boast that they “punch above their weight” in terms of influence beyond their territorial size. It’s not hard to see how they manage such a feat. It’s called duplicity, intrigue, lies, and dividing and ruling.

Britain is fomenting a diplomatic crisis between the European Union and Russia, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Evidence and precedent indicate Lavrov has his sight well-trained.

The British establishment’s notorious ability for machination and intrigue – hence the ancient moniker Perfidious Albion – can be seen as stirring the escalating row between the European Union and Russia in which diplomats are being expelled pell-mell.

This week, Russia ordered the withdrawal of representatives from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia. That came in response to the expulsion of Russian diplomats from those countries. Russia has also ordered home more diplomats from the Czech Republic. Poland and Italy have also been caught up in diplomatic antagonism with Moscow.

The row blew up last week when the Czech Republic accused Russian state agents of being responsible for twin explosions on its territory back in 2104. The blasts caused the deaths of two workers at an ammunition depot near the village of Vrbetice close to the border with Slovakia. Until recently, the Czech authorities had concluded that the explosions were an industrial accident.

What prompted the Czechs to revise their ideas and to now blame Russia for sabotage is the interpolation of Britain in providing “new information”. Specifically, it was the MI6-sponsored media group Bellingcat (a so-called private investigatory agency) which appears to have furnished the disinformation which purports to show the involvement of Russian military intelligence (GRU). Incredibly, the British claim their “evidence” shows that two of the GRU agents were also the same individuals who were alleged to have been involved in poisoning the Russian traitor-spy Sergei Skripal in England in 2018. The British claim to have passport information to support their claims, but such methodology is rife with forgery – a black art that the British are all-too skilled at.

On leveling the accusation against Russia, the Czech Republic then ordered the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats. Moscow responded angrily, saying that the claims of sabotage were a “dirty fabrication” and pointing out that Prague did not provide any information for verification. Russia took swift reciprocal action by banishing 20 Czech diplomats from its territory.

However, the row continues to flare with the Baltic states entering the fray by banning Russian officials in “solidarity” with the Czech Republic. The move by the Baltic states is predictable as they are supercharged by anti-Russian political sentiment. It’s a case of any excuse for them to inflame relations.

The dispute comes at a fraught time when the European Union is discussing imposing more sanctions on Russia over wider concerns about the conflict in Ukraine, the imprisonment of blogger Alexei Navalny and a Russian security crackdown on Navalny’s shadowy Western-backed “opposition” network.

The skirmishing over diplomats is a convenient way to further damage relations between the EU and Russia, especially as the strategically important Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline project nears completion – a project that Washington wants to eviscerate for its own selfish commercial reasons. Uncle Sam’s junior partner Britain may be obliging in that regard and thus trying to curry favor for garnering an American trade deal in the post-Brexit world.

Certainly, Russia’s top diplomat Sergei Lavrov is clear about the stealthy British hand in recent events. In a media interview this week, Lavrov mentioned the United Kingdom in wary terms, saying: “As far as the relations between Russia and Europe are concerned, I still believe that the UK is playing an active and a very serious subversive role. It withdrew from the European Union, but we see no decrease in its activities on this track. On the contrary, they are trying to influence EU member states’ approaches to Russia to the maximum possible extent.”

It should be recalled that Britain has played a starring duplicitous role in demonizing Russia and poisoning international relations.

It was Bellingcat (MI6) that pushed the narrative that Russia was complicit in the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner in 2014 over Eastern Ukraine with the loss of nearly 300 lives. Based on British “evidence” (which has been debunked as fabrication), a Dutch investigation into the disaster has accused Russia. That affair has hardened European prejudices against Russia which has fomented the imposition of sanctions.

It was a former British MI6 operative Christopher Steele who was instrumental in promoting the Russiagate dossier around 2016 which destroyed bilateral relations between the United States and Russia, and which continues to fuel fabrications about Moscow’s interference in American and European politics (even those Steele’s “dirty dossier” is a risible load of rubbish and has been debunked).

And it was the Skripal saga in Salisbury in March 2018 which Britain hatched to further poison international relations with Russia. That saga – with no proof against Russia – has become a concocted “standard proof” for the subsequent saga of “poisoning” the blogger conman Alexei Navalny. Western governments and media refer to the “Kremlin plot” to kill Skripal as “evidence” for another “Kremlin plot” to assassinate Navalny. This is tantamount to one fiction being used to prove another fiction. The same saga is now feeding into the Czech explosion row. And it all comes back to the devious ingenuity of Perfidious Albion.

Foreign Minister Lavrov added a further incisive comment on the role of Britain. He said:

“At the same time, you know, they send us signals, they propose establishing contacts. This means, they do not shy away from communication [with Russia], but try to discourage others. Again, probably [this can be explained by] their desire to have a monopoly of these contacts and again prove that they are superior to others.”

The British establishment likes to boast that they “punch above their weight” in terms of influence beyond their territorial size. It’s not hard to see how they manage such a feat. It’s called duplicity, intrigue, lies, and dividing and ruling. Perfidious Albion par excellence.

On Thursday European Parliament passed a resolution that calls for far-reaching EU sanctions on a number of fronts against Russia, and which most notably seeks to require a Russian ban on access to the SWIFT payment system if there’s ever a future move against Ukrainian sovereignty.  

The European Parliament “Demands that the EU should reduce its dependence on Russian energy, and urges the EU institutions and all Member States, therefore, to stop the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and to demand a stop to the construction of controversial nuclear power plants built by Rosatom,” the now approved resolution says.

569 members of the European Parliament voted for approval while there were 67 against the resolution’s adoption. As we explained previously, it appears a ‘preventative’ and threatening measure in the instance of any future scenario of another major Russian troop build-up in Crimea and along Ukraine’s border such as occurred over the last month.

“Should military build-up lead to an invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the EU must make clear the consequences for such a violation of international law and norms would be severe, MEPs agreed,” a European Parliament press release stated. “Such a scenario must result in an immediate halt to EU imports of oil and gas from Russia, the exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT payment system and the freezing of assets and cancellation of visas for Europe of all oligarchs tied to the Russian authorities.”

And further it underscored the EU member states must no longer be “welcoming places for Russian wealth and investments of unclear origin” as well as “the Kremlin’s strategic investments within the EU for the purposes of subversion.”

#EuropeanParliament considers #Russia‘s disconnection from SWIFT, the international payment system, in a draft resolution that addresses a potential escalation in eastern #Ukraine.https://t.co/4o1GDSbSDE

— Sonalika Kumar (@sonalika_kumar) April 29, 2021

Needless to say, if the trigger were ever actually pulled on what are at this point these official threats to “require” immediate EU action in the face of “Russian aggression” – it would be all out economic and diplomatic war – or worse. 

Previously the Kremlin warned that such a drastic move as cutting off Russia from SWIFT would indeed be considered an “act of war” – but this is precisely what officials in Kiev have been seeking to pressure Brussels to do.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

The past year I have been writing extensively about what I call the “great conservative migration”; a shift in US demographics not seen since the Great Depression. Approximately 8.9 million Americans have relocated since the beginning of the covid lockdowns according to the US Postal service, and a large portion of these people are leaving left-leaning blue states for conservative red states in the west and the south. States like California, Illinois, New York and New Jersey were at the top of the list of states people wanted to escape.

The response from leftist states has been amusing. California, for instance, has tried to obscure the data on population loss and has dismissed the existence of the migration. They claim that the state population is actually rising, but fail to mention that most of California’s population “gains” have been from babies born along with an increase in illegal immigration. This has not offset the 267,000 individuals and families that left the state in the last three months 2020 alone. That’s an entire city of people, gone in 90 days.

And where are these people going? Places like Idaho, Texas, Tennessee, Florida, etc. ALL red states that are fighting back against draconian covid mandates and other unconstitutional measures. The only outlier seems to be Oregon, which also has seen a population spike, and this indeed appears to be a migration of Californians to the north.

This leads some conservative groups to believe there is an “invasion” going on of liberals into red states. After looking at the data and meeting many people moving to my own area in Montana, I find the “liberal invasion” narrative to be fraudulent.

Leftists don’t relocate to red states, at least not very often. They do not run away from their safe spaces. Rather, they relocate an hour or two from the cities they are addicted to. This is what the data from San Francisco shows. With over 80% of people moving from the city staying within California. In other words, some leftists want to get out of the cities, but they don’t want to move far from their beloved progressive Utopias and they certainly don’t plan on embedding in conservative strongholds and trying to “take over”.

Why this theory persists is beyond me as it has no basis in reality.

No, the people moving across state lines today are mostly conservatives, they are congregating en masse in red states, and the effects have been rather dramatic. Home prices have skyrocketed due to extreme demand. In Montana, people are buying real estate sight unseen, a lot of it raw land that they are trying to build on. Lumber prices have tripled, and anyone in the construction business is booked a year and a half out. There are new residents actually scouring the message boards looking for ANYONE that can do work for them. There is nobody available. No one I know has seen anything like it in their lifetime.

Luckily, a lot of these people seem to be on the same page in terms of principles. Those I have met are all conservative and the majority of them are preppers. They moved here because they know what is coming and they want to be surrounded by like minded neighbors when the manure hits the fan. Specifically, they do not want to be caught isolated in a blue state where vaccine passports, masks and lockdowns become a regular part of life for them and their children. They want to remain free.

On the other hand, I am also hearing rumors that the relatively small number of leftists that live in my county want to leave. Some have expressed the need to “get out” and vacation in places like Portland, Oregon, where they “feel safe” because “everyone wears masks”. And I say, good for them. Hopefully they will stay there. These types of people are miserable excuses for human beings and they make everyone else around them miserable by constantly whining about how “no one follows the rules”.

As a point of reference, there have been only 17 deaths from covid in my county in well over a year. The death rate is non-existent, and the virus already swept through the area with almost everyone either infected or asymptomatic. No one in Montana is afraid of this virus except a handful of weak minded progressives.

My suspicion is that when all is said and done by the end of 2021 the US will essentially be split into two distinct nations: A leftist Marxist nation that continues to degrade into tyranny, and a conservative nation that people want to escape to so they can keep their liberties. Leftists won’t want to live near us, and we certainly will not want to live near them. Hypothetically, it should be a win-win situation, but there are other factors to consider.

We must also take into account red counties. For example, the blue state of Virginia is actually only blue in a handful of counties. The majority are conservative and have stood in defiance of attempts by gun grabbing governor Ralph Northam, saying they will ignore any new gun laws Northam and the state legislature passes. County governments and county sheriffs are in agreement; Northam has no power in these places.

In Eastern Oregon and Northern California, there is a push by multiple counties to actually join Idaho and become a part of the conservative state. The majority of voters in these counties supported the transition. The idea being that this is not a secession, and so the move will be far easier to accomplish with less legal obstacles. The decision will be voted on by county residents in May, and of course there will be attempts by congress to obstruct if the outcome is favorable.

Even if the movement is not successful, the fact that voters in red counties are unified in their goal to get away from leftist political control should be taken very seriously. This is not just about states defying federal dictates, it’s also about counties defying state governments that do not represent their values.

The bottom line is this – The leftist ideology is collectivist and totalitarian in nature. It is completely incompatible with the conservative principles of liberty, self determination, meritocracy, limited government and free market economics.

The social justice cult has gone so far into extremism that reason and logic are actually vilified by them. They openly support mass censorship, mass violence against innocent people, mob intimidation against the citizenry, they argue in favor of economic lockdowns and unconstitutional covid mandates, they support draconian vaccine passports, and they are partners with Big Tech corporations as well as globalists institutions like the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundation. They are diametrically opposed to everything that conservatives and lovers of liberty hold dear.

Honestly, it is unlikely that we will be able to share the same land mass, let alone the same cities and states, but I’ll get to that in a moment…

At the state level, there has been a dramatic push-back against constitutional trespasses by the federal government under Biden, and these include measures which are aggressively promoted by the World Economic Forum and other globalist institutions in the name of the “Great Reset”. Multiple red states have passed laws or executive orders making it illegal to require proof of vaccination (vaccine passports). Some blue states have also “claimed” they will not require vaccinations, but the devil is in the details when dealing with the political left.

In Montana, the governor and the state legislature will not allow government enforcement of vaccine passports, AND, they also will not allow corporations to demand vaccine passports either. In blue states like Illinois, the government might keep its word on passports, it might not, but they don’t really need to enforce vaccinations; all they have to do is allow major corporations to do it for them.

With colleges (public institutions posing as private), airlines, hotels, hospitals, and major retail chains requiring a vaccine passport for employment or to make purchases, the effect of medical tyranny will be the same.

Without state legal protections in place to limit social engineering by corporate behemoths the establishment still has all the tools it needs to assert covid controls.

These companies do not represent private business or free markets anymore. Instead, they are appendages of establishment power that receive billions in taxpayer dollars to finance their operations. They should no longer be treated as if they have the same rights as normal businesses.

Another interesting development is the number of red states that are passing laws which prevent the enforcement of any new federal gun controls. In Montana, Greg Gianforte just signed a bill nullifying federal gun bans. Federal rules do not apply here and state law enforcement agencies are prohibited from helping federal agencies enforce such laws. Similar legislation has been passed or is being considered in other red states like Utah and Arizona.

It is unclear what would happen if the ATF or FBI tried to make arrests within Montana based on federal gun restrictions. I suspect that without extra protection from local law enforcement these agencies would be much more vulnerable in their operations. If they met with stiff resistance, they would be on their own. I also would not be surprised if sheriffs in most Montana counties stood in their way.

The mainstream media has been almost completely silent on these developments. They barely even acknowledge the conservative migration. I doubt they will speak of the separation at all until the latest census data and postal data is more thoroughly examined. However, the changes to our nation are going to have far reaching consequences, and the consequences will be obvious in the near term.

The “Great Reset” is meant to be a global project; meaning, no one is allowed to opt out. Leftists and globalists are notoriously plantation-minded; they believe that society is involuntary, and their rules for society should apply to all people. Those who wish to leave are actually seen as traitors, because the very act of leaving suggests that the system is flawed, and doubt creates questions, and questions create demands, and demands lead to defiance, and defiance leads to rebellion.

The progressive/globalist plantation becomes an exercise in antagonistic self affirmation – You cannot leave the system, because everything is fine, and if you left people might think something is wrong and then everything would not be fine, so why would you want to upset the balance and ruin what is already perfect?

In my last article I noted that red states in the US are the ONLY places in the world where freedom from the Reset is ingrained and people have the means to fight back. I still stand by that assertion. Some conservatives assume countries like Russia are going to fight the Reset, yet Putin and the Russian government enforced extensive covid restrictions recommended by the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization, just like every other government. The head of the Russian Parliament’s committee on public health, Dmitri Morozov, stated that vaccine passports were “very important and needed in Russia”.

Let’s face it, no major government is coming to save us; these delusional fantasies of Russia or any other foreign nation fighting against the Reset need to stop. The bottom line is this: The American red states are probably the only regions in the world that are resisting the reset agenda while also having the arms to back their resolve. If a rebellion is going to start against the globalists, it will start here.

What does this mean for the future? It means we are going to be targeted. This is how I see the situation playing out…

I have no doubt that the first step by the federal government under Biden will be to start cutting off federal funds to red states while flooding blue states with stimulus money. The strategy being that blue states will have unlimited free goodies while red states languish in poverty. Biden will be betting that red state citizens reliant on government checks will become despondent or angry. Of course, these taxpayer backed funds belong to all the states, but that won’t matter to Biden or to leftists; they will claim we are getting what we deserve.

The logical response by red states will be to stop paying taxes, and to take over federal lands and the resources within their borders. Red states and red counties could also negate all EPA and BLM restrictions on resource usage and launch an epic revitalization of industry. In my area, I believe the logging industry which has been stifled by the federal government will return in full force. With lumber prices nearing hyperinflationary levels, it makes perfect sense. This will enrage the feds.

The next step would be to make travel to and from certain red states difficult in order to isolate them. The feds may shut down airline flights while proclaiming that red states are “havens for covid infection”. This will not go over well with conservatives, and we will start demolishing any checkpoints that are meant to keep us in. Leftist controlled states and counties will start checking license plates and ID and harassing or arresting anyone from a conservative area. Travel will stagnate as people will not know which places are safe and which are dangerous.

There will also be attempts to use federal agencies to insert into conservative areas to make arrests based on federal laws that have already been nullified. The goal will be to make examples out of some people, and send a message that conservatives “are not safe”, even in their own states. Eventually, the shooting will start and federal agents will die. Biden will demand a martial law response.

If everything develops as described, the question arises, how many people in the military are actually willing to die for Biden? My guess is not that many, but with the right excuses and rationalizations who knows? Conservatives have been demonized for many years now, there may be a large enough chunk of the military that believes the propaganda, but I am doubtful.

It could take two full terms of Biden for these events to happen. It could take far less time. I would not hold my breath for a 2022 or 2024 election to defuse matters. I think most conservatives learned their lesson on the futility of politics the last four years. The best possible outcome right now is that conservatives congregate, unify and organize from the local level to the state level to the point that we act as a deterrent to future tyranny.

We all know one day the establishment is going to come for us, and if so then we’ll greet them with a long range love letter (if you get my meaning). But at least we will know where we stand. At least we will be living among kindred spirits, and at least there will be a glimmer of hope for the world. Sometimes the greatest act of rebellion is to offer people an alternative, a place where the rules of tyrants hold no weight. Conservative states and counties are doing this today, and it is a beautiful thing.

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The African Swine Fever (ASF) decimated China’s hog population in 2018 and has since been brought under control as the country rebuilds its hog herd. China released a novel plan to reshape the entire hog industry to mitigate future spreading, according to Bloomberg. 

The Chinese agriculture ministry recently announced that the country would split into five regions from May. Pigs in each region will not be transported into other areas to mitigate the potential threat of ASF spreading. 

Senior analyst Lin Guofa at consultancy Bric Agriculture Group said approximately 20% of the country’s pigs, or about 140 million live animals, are transported across the country each year and increase the chances of spreading diseases. The main transportation route for farmers is from the northeast to the south to meet the large demand for fresh meat in metropolises. 

With new guidelines expected to be in place in a matter of days, areas known for little or no pig farming will have to increase capacity. 

“Some areas that used to call themselves no-pig counties or no-pig cities will have to build pig farms,” Guofa said. 

Under the guidelines, the only way for pork to be transported across regions will have to be in frozen meat form, leading to an expansion of the cold-chain industry, added Guofa. 

Pigs are a significant source of protein in China. According to data from the Dalian Commodity Exchange, the country is the world’s top consumer of pork, with annual sales of around $308 billion per year.

Chinese consumers have caught a period of relief after nearly two years of elevated pork prices due to the culling of millions of pigs countrywide during the ASF outbreak. Wholesale pork prices are down 30% year-to-date. 

“The controls will depress prices in the north in the short term and push them up in the south,” according to Wang Zhong, chief consultant at Systematic, Strategic & Soft Consulting Co. “That may eventually prompt big pork producers — including Muyuan Foodstuff Co., New Hope Liuhe Co. and Wens Foodstuff Group Co. — to build more hog farms in the south and more slaughtering facilities in the northeast and northwest,” Bloomberg said.

The new guidelines are similar to ones in Brazil and Spain that limit farmers from transporting live animals around the country. Such a measure has been successful in eradicating ASF from both countries.