As many as half of China’s breeding pigs have either died from African swine fever or been slaughtered because of the spreading disease, twice as many as officially acknowledged, according to the estimates of four people who supply large farms.
While other estimates are more conservative, the plunge in the number of sows is poised to leave a large hole in the supply of the country’s favorite meat, pushing up food prices and devastating livelihoods in a rural economy that includes 40 million pig farmers.
“Something like 50 percent of sows are dead,” said Edgar Wayne Johnson, a veterinarian who has spent 14 years in China and founded Enable Agricultural Technology Consulting, a Beijing-based farm services firm with clients nationwide.
Photo: Reuters
Three other executives at producers of vaccines, feed additives and genetics also estimate losses of 40 to 50 percent, based on falling sales for their companies’ products and direct knowledge of the extent of the deadly disease on farms across the country.
Losses are not only from infected pigs dying or being culled, but also farmers sending pigs to market early when the disease is discovered nearby, farmers and industry insiders have said, which analysts say has kept a lid on pork prices in recent months.
However, prices began rising substantially this month and the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has said they could surge by 70 percent in coming months as a result of the outbreak.
China, which produces half the world’s pork, last month said its sow herd declined by a record 23.9 percent in May from a year earlier, a slightly deeper drop than for the overall pig herd.
Sows, or adult females bred to produce piglets for slaughter, account for about one in 10 pigs in China. A decline in the sow herd usually equates to a similar drop in pork output, industry experts say.
The ministry on Monday last week said the disease has been “effectively controlled,” Xinhua news agency reported.
Dutch agricultural lender Rabobank said in April that pork production losses from China’s African swine fever outbreak could reach 35 percent.
It is revising that number higher to account for widespread slaughtering in recent months, senior analysts Pan Chenjun (潘晨軍) said.
Since China’s first reported case in August last year, it has spread to every province and beyond China’s borders, despite measures taken by Beijing to curb its advance.
The government has reported 137 outbreaks so far, but many more are going unreported, most recently in southern provinces such as Guangdong, Guangxi and Hunan, according to four farmers and an official recently interviewed by Reuters.
“Almost all the pigs here have died,” said a farmer in Guangxi’s Bobai County.
“We were not allowed to report the pig disease,” the farmer said, declining to reveal her name because of the sensitivity of the issue, adding that authorities have detained farmers for “spreading rumors” about the disease.
Authorities in Yulin, which oversees Bobai County, confirmed an outbreak of the disease in one pig on May 27.
Reuters also spoke to farmers in the cities of Zhongshan, Foshan and Maoming in Guangdong Province, all of whom had lost hundreds or thousands of pigs to the disease in the last three months.
No outbreaks have been officially reported in those cities.
China had 375 million pigs at the end of March, 10 percent fewer than at the same time a year ago, and there were 38 million sows, an 11 percent drop, China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.
Numerous suppliers to the industry have said they believe the actual decline is much worse.
Dick Hordijk, chief executive at Royal Agrifirm, last month told Dutch radio station BNR that his firm’s profits in China would be wiped out by the disease, which was spreading like “an oil slick.”
“One hundred percent of our business was focused on pigs, half of it is now gone,” he said. “That’s a disaster for the farmers and the animals.”
Johnson said the virus is so widespread that he has detected it on the surface of a highway in the province, where it can be spread by passing trucks.
He said he used the same test that is widely used to detect the virus in pigs.
NO HUMAN ERROR: After the incident, the Coast Guard Administration said it would obtain uncrewed aerial vehicles and vessels to boost its detection capacity Authorities would improve border control to prevent unlawful entry into Taiwan’s waters and safeguard national security, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday after a Chinese man reached the nation’s coast on an inflatable boat, saying he “defected to freedom.” The man was found on a rubber boat when he was about to set foot on Taiwan at the estuary of Houkeng River (後坑溪) near Taiping Borough (太平) in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), authorities said. The Coast Guard Administration’s (CGA) northern branch said it received a report at 6:30am yesterday morning from the New Taipei City Fire Department about a
IN BEIJING’S FAVOR: A China Coast Guard spokesperson said that the Chinese maritime police would continue to carry out law enforcement activities in waters it claims The Philippines withdrew its coast guard vessel from a South China Sea shoal that has recently been at the center of tensions with Beijing. BRP Teresa Magbanua “was compelled to return to port” from Sabina Shoal (Xianbin Shoal, 仙濱暗沙) due to bad weather, depleted supplies and the need to evacuate personnel requiring medical care, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) spokesman Jay Tarriela said yesterday in a post on X. The Philippine vessel “will be in tiptop shape to resume her mission” after it has been resupplied and repaired, Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, who heads the nation’s maritime council, said
CHINA POLICY: At the seventh US-EU Dialogue on China, the two sides issued strong support for Taiwan and condemned China’s actions in the South China Sea The US and EU issued a joint statement on Wednesday supporting Taiwan’s international participation, notably omitting the “one China” policy in a departure from previous similar statements, following high-level talks on China and the Indo-Pacific region. The statement also urged China to show restraint in the Taiwan Strait. US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and European External Action Service Secretary-General Stefano Sannino cochaired the seventh US-EU Dialogue on China and the sixth US-EU Indo-Pacific Consultations from Monday to Tuesday. Since the Indo-Pacific consultations were launched in 2021, references to the “one China” policy have appeared in every statement apart from the
More than 500 people on Saturday marched in New York in support of Taiwan’s entry to the UN, significantly more people than previous years. The march, coinciding with the ongoing 79th session of the UN General Assembly, comes close on the heels of growing international discourse regarding the meaning of UN Resolution 2758. Resolution 2758, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1971, recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the “only lawful representative of China.” It resulted in the Republic of China (ROC) losing its seat at the UN to the PRC. Taiwan has since been excluded from