It is exciting that Taiwan has finally eliminated foot-and-mouth disease and is qualified to export pork. However, pig farmers, the government and the media should consider whether Taiwan really can, or needs to, export pork products.
In the past, Japan was the major market for Taiwan’s pork exports. Like Japan, Taiwan has limited land and a high population density, but Japan imports pork instead of raising more pigs.
The reason is simple: The cost of raising pigs is too high. The direct costs include hog feed and human labor, but there are also the indirect environmental costs. These costs are just as high in Taiwan as in Japan.
Climate change and water shortages are causing a global food crisis, which also affects the availability and cost of animal feed. The major ingredients in Taiwan’s hog feed — corn, soybeans and wheat — are mostly imported, meaning that the costs will continue to rise.
As Taiwan’s environmental regulations tighten, the environmental costs will represent a larger part of a farmer’s expenses.
Using recycled kitchen waste could be a solution for rising direct and indirect costs. After being sterilized, kitchen leftovers make an ideal hog feed, not only reducing the cost incurred by imports, but also alleviating the burden on environmental agencies in dealing with organic waste.
The wastewater treatment facilities on pig farms could help handle the kitchen leftovers.
The government has been promoting the generation of electricity from a biogas produced from pig manure and urine, but electricity generation on many farms has shown low efficiency using these anaerobic fermentation systems.
However, research has shown that when one-tenth of the wastewater of pig manure and urine is kitchen leftovers in the fermentation process, the biogas production doubles.
Agricultural authorities have been concerned about the high levels of fat and salt in kitchen compost, which makes it unsuitable for agricultural fertilizer or even biogas residue, but long-term experiments have shown that the levels can be kept within a safe range.
Existing legislation allows the use of biogas slurry — the product of the anaerobic fermentation of pig manure and urine — on agricultural land, but there are strict regulations regarding the mixing of kitchen waste with wastewater at anaerobic fermentation facilities on pig farms, creating a bottleneck that the government needs to resolve.
Hopefully pig farming and the environment can thrive together, but the government and farmers need to place a greater emphasis on quality over quantity. Perhaps Taiwan should raise fewer pigs but increase the quality of pork, thus increasing market prices and profits.
This would allow Taiwan to step up its environmental protection efforts — only then should people talk about exporting pork.
Chen Wen-ching is president of the Environment and Development Foundation.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
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