China’s pork imports from Brazil and Europe are surging as it attempts to fill a 10m-tonne domestic shortfall of meat this year, caused by the mass pig culls it carried out after African swine fever was diagnosed in its domestic herds last year.
Chinese pork producers began preemptively culling their herds last year to avoid infection, resulting in a boost to meat supply that temporarily kept prices low and damped demand for imports. Since then the virus, which is harmless to humans but deadly to pigs, has been recorded in every province and China’s pig stock has dropped by a third.
Domestic pork prices have nearly doubled since July, reaching Rmb38 per kilogramme, according to official statistics.