Source: Susan Kelly, MEATINGPLACE, 10/26/18


The spread of African Swine Fever (ASF) in China could accelerate the structural shift in Chinese pork production and boost the country’s import needs by early 2019, according to a new report from Rabobank.

China is already seeing local supply shortages due to the ban on live hog transportation from affected regions, even though the official number of animals culled to date is small relative to the country’s total production, the bank said. Price pressure in the affected regions is forcing some small farmers out of the market.

“The possibility of a radical change in hog supply over the coming months could impact the international market,” Rabobank analysts said in the Pork Quarterly Q4 report.

Kitchen waste
China’s agriculture ministry on Wednesday said the majority of early ASF cases in the country were due to farmers feeding kitchen waste to pigs, Reuters reported. The country will set up a registration system for vehicles transporting live hogs, poultry and other livestock to contain the spread of the disease, Reuters said.

Earlier in the week, ASF was discovered in a previously unaffected area of China, the southwest province of Yunnan. To date, ASF has affected 27 cities in China, mostly in northern and eastern provinces, resulting in the culling of 200,000 hogs of the 700 million slaughtered annually in the country, according to Reuters.

Some Chicago Mercantile Exchange lean hog futures contracts ended limit up on Wednesday on concerns about the spread of ASF.

Rabobank said China’s pork imports in the first eight months of 2018 were down 0.6 percent from the year before, which is higher than expected, and jumped 10 percent year over year in August. The Chinese government said the country’s sow herd declined 4.8 percent year over year in August, which Rabobank said may be overestimated.

Chicken no substitute
In another report looking at the ASF impact, CoBank economist Will Sawyer this week said China’s hog prices have climbed 25 percent since July, and supply chain constraints and the threat of a more widespread virus could drive them even higher. Poultry has fallen out of favor with Chinese consumers and is unlikely to be accepted as a substitute for pork, he said.

While ASF’s impact on China’s hog supply so far is negligible, the disease outbreak could force a shakeup of the global pork market and provide new opportunities for the U.S. pork sector to fill demand gaps, Sawyer wrote.

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