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In an attempt to maintain the supply of pork, Vietnam allowed importation of 500,000 live hogs for slaughter from Thailand. To restock breeding farm successive importations of sows and boars from the E.U. and the U.S. were made.
In a March 2021 report Rabobank Group predicted a gradual increase in pork production, but the swine herd will not be fully restored until 2025. This forecast presumes the introduction of an effective and safe vaccine, as yet unavailable although the Department of Agriculture expects a domestic vaccine to be available in 2021. This appears to be an unlikely objective given the slow rate of development of vaccines in the EU, the U.S. and China. Recently, researchers at the USDA-ARS Laboratory on Plum Island adapted an ASF virus to grow on a cell line facilitating the eventual commercial production of a vaccine. Given the superior facilities funding and resources of China and the U.S. it is questioned how Vietnam could produce and field test an effective and safe gene-deleted vaccine this year.
 As with China, African swine fever has resulted in a marked change in the structure of pork production. Large companies including New Hope, the DeHeus Group of the Netherlands and Japfa Comfeed have established breeding and production installations with a high level of biosecurity. Production from commercial complexes will eventually supplant family and village production.
It is inevitable that with restoration of production, imports of pork will decline from a peak of 252,000 metric tons in 2020 that represented a 38 percent increase over 2019. Rabobank Group forecast a 10 to 20 percent decline in imports during 2020.
Success in controlling ASF in Vietnam will influence importation of broiler leg quarters from the U.S. During the first quarter of 2020, Vietnam imported 60,136 metric tons of broiler parts including feet. For the corresponding first quarter of 2021, imports declined by 49 percent to 30,577 metric tons valued at $27.3 million.
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