Pig farmers pessimistic as China tries to talk down swine fever

BEIJING - Sun Dawu sighs sadly when asked about the death of thousands of his pigs, killed by the African swine fever outbreak that has been decimating hog herds across China.

"The pig farm was completely destroyed," he says quietly, fanning himself from the heat and flies on his large Hebei province farm outside Beijing.

"It's a painful process, it's painful to watch them die. We buried all the dead pigs five meters (16 feet) underground."

More than a year since swine fever began to spread across the country, China's pig farmers are wary of replenishing their stock -- and the disease could become a political and economic liability for the government.

Frustrated after a month of official stonewalling, Sun posted pictures of the dead pigs on social media platform Weibo -- quickly attracting tens of millions of views and forcing the local government to respond.

Pigs that were not killed by the fever were culled.

Eight months later, his restocked herd is healthy, but under government restrictions his pig farm is still sealed off. 

His livestock is quarantined and can't be sold for consumption until at least the second half of next year.

China's swine herd is down by about 40 percent, and the shortage has pushed prices of the country's meat staple up by at least half.

A Rabobank report warned China could lose 200 million pigs during the epidemic, and Sun said he believed the number of those affected is higher than official estimates.

"Some pig farmers dare not declare sick pigs, so they quietly sell off even dead pigs," he said.

TRADE WAR FALLOUT 

By the time swine fever broke out on his farm and killed his herd of 15,000, Sun says "all the pigs of the other farms were dead".

But only one case of swine fever has been officially reported in Hebei, according to the agriculture ministry -- Sun Dawu's farm.

The province was declared free of the disease in April.

The shortage is being exacerbated by stuttering imports from the US in a painful trade war.

And as it wears on, it is not just a problem for farmers, but also for the country's leaders -- afraid of social repercussions and spiraling economic costs.

"Historically, high food inflation has triggered bouts of urban protests," says Victor Shih, the Hi Ho Miu Lam chair professor at University of California San Diego.

Beijing has implemented several measures to boost the pig population, including subsidies of up to five million yuan ($700,000) for breeders.

They also announced in September that new large-scale breeding bases were being built in southwest Sichuan province with the capacity to produce two million pigs a year.

But farmers contacted by AFP -- reluctant to be identified -- were afraid to raise new herds despite government subsidies, fearing that any trade deal between Beijing and Washington would undercut Chinese producers or that their hogs would be taken away again.

"When the trade war between China and the US ends, the government will start to import large quantities of foreign pork and Chinese farmers will have no profit," a Hebei farmer surnamed Zhang told AFP.

'LOST TOO MUCH' 

In a bid to keep a grip on escalating prices, the government auctioned 30,000 tonnes of pork from its strategic meat reserves ahead of the National Day holiday. 

Officials insisted in September that there was sufficient supply and prices would now be stable.

But given the slowing economy and the trade war, "pork-driven inflation has further limited the government's options", says Shih.

The government also toyed with encouraging citizens to eat less meat -- efforts met with mockery.

"We should just eat the pig feed, it will be healthier," wrote one social media user after a front-page article in the state-run People's Daily extolled a vegetarian lifestyle.

Farmers also accuse governments of not doing enough to tackle the crisis, particularly local authorities that don't want to fork out compensation to farmers.

Sun started as a farmer three decades ago with 50 pigs, but now runs a large business that he says can absorb the shock of his losses -- hundreds of millions of yuan in total.

But others are not so lucky.

"Some pig farms just lost too much to rebuild," Sun said. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Farmer probed by police for selling wagyu cattle sperm to smuggler

TOKYO - Police recently investigated a farmer in western Japan for selling wagyu beef cattle's sperm and fertilized eggs to a Japanese man who attempted to smuggle them to China, investigative sources said Sunday.

The livestock farmer in Tokushima Prefecture told the police in February he sold the sperm and the eggs for several million yen to a man he had never met before, the sources said.

The investigation came after Chinese authorities found the Japanese man carrying the sperm and eggs, stashed in straw-like containers, in July last year and did not allow him to enter the country.

The man, who did not go through the required procedure for exporting livestock and the like, told the police he was just asked by an acquaintance to carry the sperm and eggs to China. The police believe the man is different from the person who bought them from the Tokushima farmer.

The farmer did not follow necessary procedures to sell cattle sperm and eggs either, telling the police he was asked to sell them over the phone and did not know they would be taken out of the country, the sources said.

Japan has already seen other genetic resources smuggled to other countries. The agricultural ministry has said some plant varieties newly developed by Japanese farmers have been illegally taken out of the country, including certain strawberries and muscat grapes.

==Kyodo

source: news.abs-cbn.com

McDonald's unveils plan for cutting antibiotics in beef

NEW YORK - McDonald's announced a plan on Tuesday for a phased reduction of antibiotics in beef, expanding a health-oriented reform to a new meat source other than chicken.

The fast-food giant described a 3-stage process where it would first undertake a study of its top 10 beef sourcing markets of current antibiotic use in livestock and by 2020 establish reduction targets.

Starting in 2020, McDonald's will begin reporting progress against antibiotic reduction targets.

"McDonald's believes antibiotic resistance is a critical public health issue and we take seriously our unique position to use our scale for good to continue to address this challenge," said Keith Kenny, McDonald's global vice president for sustainability.

McDonald's, Walmart, Tyson Foods and others have already announced plans to restrict or phase out antibiotic use in chickens. 

The shift follows warnings about antibiotic resistance from health officials and a Sept. 2016 United Nations General Assembly resolution that pledged coordinated action to address overuse.

But despite the wave of announcements on chicken, there has not been comparable progress on beef, said Lena Brook, a food policy expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who praised the company for taking leadership following pressure from her group and others.

Brook said 43 percent of medically important antibiotics sold to the livestock industry go to the beef industry, compared to only 6 percent for chicken.

"The vast majority of these drugs are routinely distributed en masse in feed or water -- often to animals that are not sick to help them survive crowded and unsanitary conditions on industrial farms," Brook said in a blog post.

"Even as a wave of reform took hold in the chicken industry, the US beef industry has flown under the radar on this issue for far too long," Brook said.

"In the ongoing fight to end antibiotic overuse, this step up from McDonald's sends a clear message that business as usual will no longer be acceptable."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

China's swine fever outbreak may spread in Asia: FAO

BEIJING - An outbreak of African swine fever in China may spread to other parts of Asia, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization warned Tuesday, as the world's largest pork producer scrambled to contain the disease.

China has culled more than 24,000 pigs in 4 provinces to stop the disease from proliferating, the FAO said in a statement. The first outbreak was reported in early August.

The FAO said the cases have been detected in areas more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) apart, meaning it could cross national borders.

"The deadly pig virus may spread to other Asian countries anytime," the FAO said.

The "diverse geographical spread of the outbreaks in China have raised fears that the disease will move across borders to neighboring countries of Southeast Asia or the Korean Peninsula where trade and consumption of pork products is also high," it added.

China reported its first case of the disease in northeast Liaoning province earlier this month.

Last week, the eastern city of Lianyungang announced it had culled 14,500 pigs in an attempt to check the disease's spread.

"The movement of pig products can spread diseases quickly and, as in this case of African swine fever, it's likely that the movement of such products, rather than live pigs, has caused the spread of the virus to other parts of China," explained Juan Lubroth, FAO's chief veterinarian.

African swine fever is not harmful to humans but causes hemorrhagic fever in domesticated pigs and wild boar that almost always ends in death within a few days.

There is no antidote or vaccine, and the only known method to prevent the disease from spreading is a mass cull of the infected livestock.

In a report to the World Organisation for Animal Health, Beijing said an emergency plan had been launched and control measures taken to halt the spread of the disease.

The FAO warned in May of the risk of the spread of African swine fever from Russia.

Around half of the world's pigs are raised in China, and the Chinese are the biggest consumers of pork per capita, according to the FAO.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Existential debate in US food industry: What is meat?

NEW YORK - Can a hamburger or steak be labeled "meat" if it is plant-based? 

That question has sparked a debate about US food labels as key US cattle industry players have sought to crack down on marketing of proteins made from soy and other plant-based substances.

Jessica Almy, policy director of the non-profit Good Food Institute, which promotes meat-alternatives, said labels must state clearly if a product is made from soy or another plant, but they usually make sense in context.

"Regardless of whether it is made of beef, soy, or wheat, a burger tells you it can be cooked on a grill, placed on a bun, and served with mustard and ketchup," she said.

Almy also sees no alternative to labeling as "meat" new products made from animal cells grown in a lab. Such protein offerings are expected to hit US supermarkets and specialty shops within the next few years.

"These are muscles and fat. It would be extremely misleading to call it other than meat," said Almy said.

That stance has enraged some in the traditional meat industry, spurring the US Cattlemen's Association to file a petition to the Agriculture Department to reserving the term "meat" or "beef" to protein derived from slaughtered animals.

"Labels indicating that a product is 'beef' should be limited to product from cattle that have been born, raised and harvested in the traditional manner," the petition said.

The cattle association, which represents ranchers and cattle breeders, said it wants to avoid a similar outcome to the dairy industry, which has seen alternative products made of soy, almond and other non-dairy sources take 10 percent of the "milk" market.

"We started seeing these products put into the meat shelves in the grocery stores with packaging, label and design misleading the consumers into believing that perhaps it is a healthier version of the traditional meat or perhaps this is real beef," said USCA spokeswoman Lia Biondo.

"We are trying to preempt the issue, to prevent what the dairy industry is going through."

INDUSTRY SPLIT 

For now, alternative meat products represent a tiny portion of US protein sales. But the items are becoming more widely used, and not just by vegetarians.

Startups in alternative food today offer products that do a much-improved job of simulating the taste, texture and smell of traditional meat. Industry players say it is only a matter of time before these options are made with animal cells, further complicating the picture.

While the USCA petition has won some support, not all in the food industry have signed on.

The Farm Bureau generally supports the idea behind the petition, but does not want oversight of alternative proteins to shift outside of the Agriculture Department.

"If it is not called meat, what is it then? We want to retain the jurisdiction under the Secretary of Agriculture," said Dale Moore, who is in charge of public affairs for the Farm Bureau.

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association, which counts among its members meat distributors and processors, has not signed the petition either.

Chris Kerr, investment manager at New Crop Capital, a venture capital firm investing in alternative food companies, said efforts like the USCA petition illustrate a head-in-the-sand approach to shifting tastes.

"We are looking at a major behavioral shift by a whole segment of the consumer population, driven a lot by the millennials. They are very open to plant-based food, to being flexitarian," he said.

"The industry can fight this, but they are arguably fighting against themselves because ultimately most meat producers will have some stake in this and it will be a successful outcome," he added.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

DA Bans Beef From Paraguay

MANILA, Philippines — No cattle or livestock from Paraguay will be allowed into the country following the outbreak of the food-and-mouth disease (FMD) in the landlocked Latin American country.

The Department of Agriculture (DA) announced the ban Tuesday after the Paris-based Office International des Epizooties (OIE) or the World Animal Health Organization confirmed the outbreak.

In Memorandum Order No. 2, Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala said the temporary ban on the importation of FMD susceptible animal products and by-products from Paraguay will stay until there is a declaration that the outbreak has been contained.

The ban is imposed universally to protect herds from being infected as well as to prevent the possible entry of unsafe meat products.

Alcala also issued Memorandum Order No. 3, which also slapped a temporary freeze on the importation of domestic and wild birds, including poultry meat, day-old chicks, eggs and semen, from Melbourne and Victoria, Australia.

source: mb.com.ph