In Foreign Policy, veteran science writer Laurie Garrett presents a devastating picture of the potential impact of China’s swine fever epidemic.
- Garrett connects the dots from dying pigs to President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, arguing that escalating tariffs are poised to combine with the spreading virus to wreak havoc on markets for pork, corn, soybeans, and even pharmaceuticals.
- That’s because US farmers sell corn and soybeans to China to feed China’s massive population of swine… and swine intestines provide a key ingredient in the blood-thinning drug heparin. The huge drop in the supply of pig intestines has already pushed China to secretly replace the ingredient with a subpar substitute, which led to deaths in the US and Europe.
