JIAXIANG, China - On a 30-hectare (74-acre) plot of land in China's Shandong province poultry hub, more than half a million white-feathered ducks are busy eating, chattering and laying eggs to produce cheap meat for thousands of factory canteens.
With birds already packed into around 60 open-sided buildings, farm owner Shenghe Group is expanding further, aiming to raise output by 30 percent this year to capture record profits as a plunge in pig numbers shrinks production of pork, China's favorite meat.
"The market prospects are very good now because of African swine fever," said Shenghe Chairman Wang Shuhong, whose firm sells about 300,000 ducklings a day for fattening and slaughter.
The deadly pig disease has already reduced China's hog herd by more than a quarter, according to official data. As many as half of the country's breeding sows are thought to have died or been slaughtered to cope with disease outbreaks.
Pork production will fall by 30 percent or about 16 million tonnes, say analysts at Dutch lender Rabobank, pushing prices to new records and leaving a gaping hole in the country's protein supply.
CHEAP PROTEIN
Higher pork prices - up about 35 percent in a year - have already fueled a surge in poultry meat demand. Chicken breast is about 20 percent more expensive than a year ago, while duck breast has nearly trebled in price to 14,600 yuan ($2,125) a tonne, according to Shenghe.
This is still only about half the cost of pork, but such prices are unheard of in China, where breast is typically the cheapest part of the bird.
About 80 percent of the world's ducks are raised in China, but are traditionally eaten in the south, where fried duck tongues, braised feet and spicy duck neck are popular snacks, and duck intestines make up a hotpot.
In recent years, however, more ducks have been processed for use by cost-conscious catering firms, supplying large canteens feeding schools, factories, businesses and the military.
These buyers are now switching as much pricey pork as they can to duck.
A procurement manager with a catering firm that supplies about 100 large clients around China said he has replaced about 20-30 percent of the pork on menus with either chicken or duck meat. He declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.
"We may switch even more. But our concern is that the poultry price is now going up as well," he said.
The price of day-old ducklings, sold by farms like Shenghe, has hovered around 6 yuan, 3 times the usual level, since July last year.
Prices eased last month as farmers held off restocking during hot summer weather, but are rising again and set to go higher, said Dong Xiaobo, China general manager for French genetics company Orvia, the No.2 supplier of breeding ducks.
Orvia is sold out 6 months ahead and has even had calls from pig farmers considering raising ducks after losing their hogs to African swine fever.
"I've never seen this in our 10 years in this market," said Dong.
PIG CRISIS, DUCK OPPORTUNITY
As swine fever continues to spread, China's vice-premier Hu Chunhua has urged poultry farmers to help fill the protein gap to maintain social and economic stability.
Analysts warn the disease could hit some farms more than once, and ratings agency Fitch forecasts pork output will stay below 2018 levels through 2021.
With output of about 5 million tonnes last year, less than half China's chicken production, duck meat has plenty of room for growth.
The barrier to entry is lower for ducks than broiler chickens and breeding stock is more available, said Pan Chenjun, senior analyst at Rabobank.
Broiler chicken farmers rely almost entirely on imported breeding stock, which has been restricted by China's bans on imports from key markets because of bird flu outbreaks. Output may expand less than 5 percent this year, said Pan.
Any rapid expansion carries risks however. In densely stocked farms, diseases like bird flu, several strains of which are circulating in China, spread easily.
And it remains to be seen whether duck farmers can hold on to a bigger share of the meat market when pork output recovers.
Duck farmers were forced out of the industry in droves between 2012 and 2016 when overproduction killed profits, and most people still want more pork dishes than any other meat, said the catering company manager.
But Shenghe's Wang, who is planning to expand downstream with a slaughterhouse later this year, is not worried.
"Pork output won't go up in the next 3 years and will take at least 5 years to recover," he said.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
HONG KONG—Hong Kong will cull 4,700 pigs after African swine fever was detected in an animal at a slaughterhouse close to the border with China, the second such case in a month in the crowded financial hub.
The animal came from a farm in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong and importation from mainland China has been suspended until further notification, Sophia Chan, Secretary of the city's Food and Health Department said Friday night.
The government-run slaughterhouse in Sheung Shui will be closed for cleansing and disinfection, she added.
Last month around 6,000 pigs were culled after the virus was detected in a pig imported from a farm in the same province. Supply from across the border was temporarily suspended for a week during the disinfection of slaughterhouse.
Pork is a staple of Chinese cuisine, with space-starved Hong Kong importing the majority of what it consumes from the mainland.
After African swine fever spread across more than half of China's provinces last year, Hong Kong banned imports from any Chinese farm where the virus had been detected.
Chinese officials have said hundreds of thousands of pigs were culled in a bid to stop its spread -- an effort that has also seen restrictions on transporting pigs from affected areas.
With some of the world’s most densely populated streets, Hong Kong remains on high alert to diseases. In 2003, some 300 people died during an outbreak of severe acute respiratory disease.
The virus is not dangerous to humans but is fatal to pigs and wild boar.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
NAGOYA - Japan's swine fever epidemic is spreading, with local authorities in five central and western prefectures saying Wednesday they are struggling to contain the highly contagious virus that was first reported in September.
"We are facing an extremely serious situation," farm minister Takamori Yoshikawa told a meeting at his ministry in Tokyo while instructing officials to take thorough countermeasures. The ministry also set up a special task force in Gifu Prefecture to step up containment efforts.
Spreading from farms in Gifu, the hog cholera virus was newly detected by prefectural and local authorities at farms in neighboring Aichi as well as in Osaka, Shiga and Nagano prefectures.
The government held a Cabinet meeting Wednesday to discuss rapid responses with officials from the prefectures.
"We must prevent the spread of the virus through tighter cooperation between the government and relevant local authorities," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at the meeting, asking ministries including the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries to work closely and respond to requests from the prefectures.
"We also ask relevant parties to start an information campaign so that consumers will not be worried," said Suga.
The total number of pigs to be culled at affected farms is expected to reach 15,000.
"It worries me that we don't know how the disease is spreading," said a pig farmer in Iida, Nagano Prefecture. "The only thing we can do is to thoroughly manage hygiene."
The disease does not affect humans even if meat from an infected animal is consumed, but it is fatal to pigs and boars.
Around 130 wild boars in Gifu and Aichi prefecture have tested positive for infection despite experts' initial assumption that the disease would not spread among the animals, which typically do not live in large herds.
Although there is a vaccine to counter classic swine fever, using it could prevent Japan from regaining its World Organization for Animal Health status as a CSF free country, hindering Japan's plan to expand pork exports. The organization already suspended Japan's status after the outbreak in September.
Yasuhiro Ozato, a senior vice farm minister, expressed reluctance to use the vaccine, saying, "We will seek to resolve this by sticking to hygiene control standards."
The Aichi prefectural government began culling around 6,600 pigs at a farm in the city of Toyota with the help of the Ground Self-Defense Force, while banning shipments from six other farms located within 10 kilometers.
The farm in Toyota had shipped pigs to six facilities in Nagano, Gifu, Aichi, Mie, Shiga and Osaka prefectures since January. The ministry has not detected the virus in Mie and the prefecture's government said that all of its tests on hogs from the farm in Toyota were negative.
The farm in Toyota reported to the Aichi government on Monday that pigs were showing symptoms of infection, including loss of appetite, and the prefecture detected the hog cholera virus in five pigs the following day. Detailed tests by the central government confirmed the infection on Wednesday.
The Aichi government said the farm in Toyota shipped pigs to a Nagano Prefecture farm Tuesday morning even after noticing hog cholera symptoms among them as prefectural authorities suspected another illness and did not stop shipments.
Of the 80 pigs brought to the farm in Miyada, Nagano, 79 were found to have been infected with the virus, according to the Nagano prefectural government.
Six hogs sent to a farm in Osaka Prefecture tested positive for the virus, Governor Ichiro Matsui said, adding all hogs at the farm will be culled as soon as a location is determined. There are around 700 hogs at the farm, according to the prefecture.
Matsui also said that he will discuss methods with the farm ministry.
A man involved in pig farming who lives near the Toyota farm said, "There was a vet at the company (managing the farm). I thought they were taking thorough preventive measures."
Hog cholera was detected at a farm in the city of Gifu in September, the first such discovery in Japan since 1992. The country declared the virus eradicated in 2007.
==Kyodo
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
* WH Group ordered to shut Zhengzhou plant for 6 weeks
* 2nd outbreak in 2 weeks in China of African swine fever
* Previously undetected in China or East Asia
* Authorities ban movement of pigs, pork in affected area
* Stirs concerns about spread across world's largest pig herd
BEIJING - China has ordered the world's top pork producer, WH Group Ltd, to shut a major slaughterhouse as authorities race to stop the spread of deadly African swine fever (ASF) after a second outbreak in the planet's biggest hog herd in two weeks.
The discovery of infected pigs in Zhengzhou city, in central Henan province, about 1,000 kilometers from the first case ever reported in China, has stirred animal health experts' fears of fresh outbreaks - as well as food safety concerns among the public.
Though often fatal to pigs, with no vaccine available, ASF does not affect humans, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
ASF has been detected in Russia and Eastern Europe as well as Africa, though never before in East Asia. It is one of the most devastating diseases to affect swine herds. It occurs among commercial herds and wild boars, is transmitted by ticks and direct contact between animals, and can also travel via contaminated food, animal feed, and international travelers.
WH Group said in a statement that Zhengzhou city authorities had ordered a temporary six-week closure of the slaughterhouse after some 30 hogs died of the highly contagious illness on Thursday. The plant is one of 15 controlled by China's largest pork processor Henan Shuanghui Investment & Development , a subsidiary of WH Group.
Zhengzhou city authorities have banned all movement of pigs and pork products in and out of the affected area for the same six weeks.
Shuanghui said in a separate statement on Friday it culled 1,362 pigs at the slaughterhouse after the infection was discovered.
The infected pigs had travelled by road from a live market in Jiamusi city in China's northeastern province of Heilongjiang, through areas of high pig density to central Henan. Another northeastern province, Liaoning, has culled thousands of pigs since a first case of ASF was reported two weeks ago.
The pigs' long journey, and the vast distance between the two cases, stoked concerns about the spread of disease across China's vast pig herd - and into East Asia.
"The areas of concern now involve multiple Chinese provinces and heighten the likelihood of further cases," the Swine Health Information Center, a U.S. research body, said in a note.
'A LITTLE SCARED'
As Zhengzhou city froze pig movements, Heilongjiang authorities were also investigating whether the pigs involved were infected in the northeastern province bordering Russia.
Meanwhile comments on the country's Twitter-like Weibo highlighted worries about the safety of eating pork, a staple in China's diet with retail sales topping $840 billion each year. The relationship between people and pigs in China is close, with the Chinese word for "home" made up of the character "roof" over the character for "pig".
Posts expressing concern that infected meat may enter the food stream and fears about whether it is safe to eat pork garnered the most attention.
"A little scared. What will happen if you eat (pork)?" said one poster.
WH Group said on Friday it did not expect the closure of the Zhengzhou slaughterhouse to have any adverse material impact on business, helping its shares rise 1.6 percent after slumping 10 percent on Thursday. Shuanghui shares were up 1.3 percent on Friday afternoon.
The Zhengzhou operation accounts for an "insignificant" portion of WH Group's operations, the company said, adding it does not expect any disruption to supply of pork and related products as a result of the temporary closure. On Thursday, Shuanghui said it had diverted sales orders to other operations.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
