China’s Putting Pigs in 13 Story ‘Hog Hotels’ to Keep Germs Out

China is taking hog biosecurity to new levels -- 13 stories in fact. That’s the height of a building in southern China where more than 10,000 pigs are kept in a condominium-style complex, complete with restricted access, security cameras, in-house veterinary services and carefully prepared meals. The seemingly luxurious conditions represent a state-of-the-art approach to biosecurity in which pigs -- the main source of meat in China -- are shielded from viruses, including the devastating African swine fever that wiped out half the nation’s hogs in the two years before the coronavirus pandemic emerged. Nicknamed “hog hotels,” these gigantic vertical farms are being built by companies, including Muyuan Foods and New Hope Group, emulating the strict controls major suppliers in other countries have used to prevent outbreaks of the devastating disease. China is copying best-practices from Europe and the U. S. to close its biosecurity gap, said Rupert Claxton, the U. K.-based meat director at consultant Gira, who has been providing advice to farmers and businesses for two decades. “In 20 years, it’s done what the Americans took probably 100 years to do,” he said. Lethal African swine fever, which sickens pigs much like Ebola kills humans, caused a dramatic outbreak in China in 2018. Within a year, roughly half the nation’s herd of more than 400 million pigs had been wiped out -- more than the entire annual output of the U. S. and Brazil combined -- leading to rocketing prices and unprecedented imports. Food security became a top priority, and as inflation surged to the highest in eight years, the government had to turn to emergency sources of frozen meat to cool prices. New agriculture policies were instituted to accelerate a shift to large-scale, industrial operations over backyard farms that have traditionally fattened pigs on raw kitchen scraps and swill -- the main sources of African swine fever. Now, domestic hog numbers recovered more swiftly than anticipated because mega farms have expanded capacity so aggressively. Wholesale pork prices have tumbled so much that it tripped the government’s new alert system, prompting authorities to begin buying pork for state reserves and to shore up the market. Still, the virus threat persists, with 11 incidents reported so far in 2021, prompting the culling of more than 2,000 pigs, China’s farm ministry said in July. The emergence of new strains that appear to cause milder symptoms and have a longer incubation period are complicating efforts to detect and respond to outbreaks, the ministry said. In developed countries, pig production is dominated by bigger farms in fewer hands. This has been seen for decades in the U. S., Denmark and Netherlands, which have among the best biosecurity standards globally and never reported a single African swine fever outbreak in recent years.


All data is taken from the source: http://bloomberg.com
Article Link: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-01/china-s-putting-pigs-in-13-story-hog-hotels-to-keep-germs-out


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