Since January, the farm has shipped pigs to six facilities in Nagano, Gifu, Aichi, Shiga, Mie, and Osaka prefectures, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. It added that it had found the virus at all the above places except Mie.

The Nagano prefectural government also started culling 2,400 pigs at a farm in the village of Miyada.

The government could end up killing a total of 15,000 pigs, Kyodo News
agency reported.

In late January, authorities in Gifu culled about 2,500 hogs in the seventh case of swine fever since September last year. Prior to that, Japan had not reported any cases of the virus since 1992.