China chicken prices jump on supply shortage as consumers swap poultry for pricey pork
- China is suffering from a shortage of chickens even as African swine fever kills off the pig supply, causing pork prices to soar
- Chicken imports from the US and France have been banned in China since 2016 because of a bird flu outbreak
Chicken prices are surging as consumers try to substitute poultry for pork and Chinese farmers cull pig herds to combat a nationwide outbreak of African swine fever.
But Chinese shoppers who hope to use poultry meat as an affordable alternative to pork may be disappointed given that chickens remain in short supply, industry insiders and analysts said.
China has faced a chicken shortage since 2016 and the scarcity could get worse this year, driving up the price of chicken meat in the months ahead, according to Gao Xiang, an analyst with Sublime China Information SCI, one of China’s largest information providers for the country’s commodity market.
China relies on imported breeding stock for production of white-feathered broiler chickens which are bred and raised specifically for meat production, which account for more than half the country’s chicken supply. The country has so far been unsuccessful in developing its own white-feather pedigree lines.
Poultry imports from the United States and France have been banned in China since 2016 in the wake of a bird flu outbreak in those countries in December 2014. The ban has produced a sharp drop in the supply of white-feather “grandparent” stock.
According to official data, total output of live chickens on the mainland has dropped from around 6 billion birds in 2016 to 5.72 billion in 2017 and 4.16 billion last year. Production is expected to drop at least another 10 per cent this year, Gao said.
