Source: Lisa M. Keefe, MEATINGPLACE, 1/7/19



The possibility of a slowdown in the Chinese economy is in opposition to the spread African Swine Fever among the pork industry there and long-term growth in protein consumption nationwide since 2000.

The analysts at Steiner Consulting Group weighed out the divergent trends in a recent Daily Livestock Report.

“As Chinese consumers have become more prosperous in the last two decades, meat consumption in China has increased sharply,” mostly pork, the report noted. Very little of the pork consumption has been imported over that period; however, the effects of ASF on domestic supply could change that equation.

In 2007, for example, the spread of blue ear disease in China caused production there to decline by 7.8 percent and pork consumption to drop 7.2 percent.

Beef, while accounting for less than 10 percent of the consumption of red meat and poultry combined, has accounted for about 35 percent of the growth in imports in the last 20 years to China and Hong Kong, and about 78 percent of incremental growth in beef exports from the top beef exporting countries.

The competing economic factors will significantly influence the international protein industry in 2019.

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