China must get pork supply back on track for Lunar New Year, Vice-Premier Hu Chunhua says

China must resolutely work to achieve the target of recovering pig production numbers and stabilise pork supply for the upcoming holidays, Vice-Premier Hu Chunhua said on Saturday.

The country must ensure a stable supply of the meat in key periods of early 2020, including the Lunar New Year holiday in January and during the annual National People’s Congress in March, Xinhua quoted him as saying at a meeting on animal husbandry.

Millions of pigs have died or been culled due to the African swine fever outbreak in China and other Asian countries. The disease has slashed China’s pig herd by as much as half since August 2018, US agribusiness firm Archer Daniels Midland said in a recent report.

The ravaging of pig herds in the world’s top pork market helped to drive China’s consumer price index up 3.8 per cent year on year in October, its fastest rise in nearly eight years.

Why all options are on the table to solve China’s pork crisis

Pork prices in October more than doubled from a year earlier, according to China’s statistics bureau, accounting for more than 60 per cent of the increase in consumer inflation.

China’s imports of pork in the month also doubled from a year earlier in response to the slump in domestic production, and Beijing has pushed to approve new sources of pork as part of its efforts to stabilise prices.

At a separate forum on Saturday, Fang Xinghai, vice-chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, said the government would launch a new pig futures contract as soon as possible given the importance of pork to the Chinese diet, the official Securities Times reported, without giving a target date for the launch.