China is emphasizing larger, better capitalized hog production facilities that can deploy better disease management practices. Chinese farmers are taking pigs to larger size before slaughter to capture a better return in the current high-priced market. However, there are potentially permanent changes in what the Chinese eat as a side effect of the disease problem. The Chinese constitute roughly 19 percent of the world’s population and consume nearly 30 percent of the world’s beef, chicken and pork. However, that is largely due to the country’s out-sized consumption of pork. Pork disappearance in China reached its peak in 2014 and its share of global pork consumption had begun to decline before the outbreak of ASF. ...

TAGS – Livestock, China