11.   Swine fever is highly contagious, but is not considered a threat to humans.

12.   Take, for instance, the report from Britain, where thousands of pigs have been slaughtered because of an outbreak of swine fever.

13.   Swine fever, like mad cow disease, is usually controlled only by the destruction of infected animals.

14.   The EU recently became embroiled in major dispute with the U.S., after the U.S. refused to accept any pork imports from countries affected with swine fever.

15.   The European Union has threatened to ban German pork exports amid an outbreak of swine fever in the Eastern German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

16.   The Dutch plan to reorganize its pork industry is good news for Spain, where Dutch piglets imported for fattening are believed to have carried the swine fever.

17.   The EU said the U.S. had agreed to limit any import ban to individual regions within countries where swine fever had been discovered.

18.   The same was true for classical swine fever.

19.   The slackening reflects temporary effects of swine fever, rather than a slowdown in underlying growth, the government said.

20.   This is not the first such charge by Cuba, which earlier accused the U.S. government of spreading dengue and swine fever.