One-quarter doesn't sound like much to me as a sheep farmer. Our herds double-to-triple every year, and then get cut way back again as we turn the lambs into meat. Pigs have even more offspring: 5-6 piglets per litter, 1.5 litters per year, and can have their first litter at 8 months. "One-quarter of the pigs" should be replacable in less than a year, a minor temporary supply shortage for the meat market.
EDIT: I don't disupte any of the facts of the article, and my use of the world "minor" is from the presumption that people might infer that this is a long-term problem, rather than an acute and quickly rectifiable one which seems "minor" in comparison to a long-term one.
Individual farmers don't lose 1/4 of their pigs. They lose 100% of their pigs, as all must be culled by law if the disease is found. Recovering from this is difficult if you don't have the money or ability to take on debt to purchase new stock at high post-catastrophe prices. I think this will cause a significant shift in China from small producers to large factory production, as a lot of the small producers will not recover.
I don't dispute any of that. I only wanted to head off a possible misconception that the headline might have lead people to believe that losing "one quarter" was going to be hard to recover from. It's definitely bad, but also easy and quick to recover from.
EDIT: I don't disupte any of the facts of the article, and my use of the world "minor" is from the presumption that people might infer that this is a long-term problem, rather than an acute and quickly rectifiable one which seems "minor" in comparison to a long-term one.