Videos Of Mass Culling Of Pigs To Stop Swine Fever Falsely Linked To Coronavirus

Both the videos are doing the rounds on Facebook with a similar caption, "Pigs been destroyed by Chinese government to control the sickness may be Corona or any other sickness."

The posts are archived here and here. BOOM has chosen not to include the videos due to its disturbing nature.

Fact Check

Video 1

The screenshots of the video which show pigs in a truck and a pit where they were thrown later, could be traced to a news article after reverse image search on its key frames.

The article was published on January 1, 2019. The article linked to a Facebook post that was published on December 29, 2018 and its links to the outbreak of African swine fever in mainland China. Below is a screenshot of the article.

A tweet featuring the same video was uploaded on December 29, 2018. An article published on a blog on November 13, 2018 featured a screenshot from the video showing pigs being transported in a truck. An excerpt from the article when translated in English, reads, "Recently, after a swine fever outbreak in a large pig farm in Putian, Fujian, the boss sold a large number of live pigs and fled. Hundreds of pigs died when farmers in neighboring counties bought it back. The outflow of sick pigs caused panic among the locals, but officials said nothing. On November 8, the news office of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the Communist Party of China announced that the African swine fever epidemic was found on the farm of Haixing Breeding Co Ltd, Lingchuan Town, Putian City, Fujian."

A news report by Epochtimes corroborated the information about the outbreak of African swine fever in northern China, the world's largest pork market, on August 1, 2018. Hundreds of thousands of pigs were slaughtered in the second half o 2018 as the outbreak spread to other provinces.

Video 2

The video which shows pigs being pushed into a pit and set afire could be traced to a Facebook post from December, 2018. The caption of the post relates the burning of the animals to a 'plague.' We also came across videos of live pigs being culled by setting them on fire, from as early as November, 2018.

Another news report from December, 2018 corroborated the outbreak of swine fever from pig farms and the subsequent burning and burying of live animals.