china pig industry performance
Swine Production in China
Published: December 26, 2006
By: CHEN DAI-WEN - Biomin World Nutrition Forum 2006
China has a long history in swine production and rich resources in swine breed. It was reported that the history of swine production of China has lasted for about 6000 years. There are totally 126 pig breeds in China, 66 of them were described in the book of Records of Swine Breeds of China, including 48 local breeds, 12 newly-selected breeds and 6 foreign breeds, respectively. According to FAO, the output of pork was 42.40 million tons in 2001, accounting for 46.1% of the world total. China is the largest pig producer in the world.
Current situation of swine production in China
LIVE PIG PRODUCTION
When New China was founded in 1949, the output of pork meat was only 1.70 million tons. With the fast development of national economy and continuous improvement of people’s living standard, the demands of meat, especially the pork is growing day by day, it makes the swine production develop quickly.
Live pig production of China has a great progress near the 20 years, and the number of total inventory and slaughter pigs has being increased stably since 1985. Live pig production during 1986-1995 and 1996-2004 are showed in Table 1 and Table 2 respectively. According to FAO, the number of inventory pigs in China accounted for 44.3% of the world total, and slaughter pigs for 33.6% in 1990. In 2004, China produced 608 million slaughter pigs with marketing rate of 127.4%.
Table 1. Swine production in China (1986-1995)
Source: Statistical data of Agricultural Ministry of China.
From Table 2, the average increase rate of live pigs is 3-4% from 1997- 2004. It indicates that the development pattern of swine production is being transferred from quantity style into quality style in China.
Table 2. Swine production in China (1996-2004)
Source: Statistical data of Agricultural Ministry of China.
PORK PRODUCTION
According to FAO, the amount of pork produced in China was 18.92 million tons, accounting for 32.6% of the world total in 1990. Pork production amounted to 29.7 million tons in 1995, annual increasing rate being 12%.
The amount of pork per capita was 32.93 kg and 31.46 kg respectively in 1996 and 1999 with comparison to 14.87 kg and 14.79kg of the world average. The total pork production in 1999 ranked the first of world pork production. The output of pork in 2004 in China was 47.45 million tons with over 42% being produced in 5 provinces of Sichuan, Henan, Hubei, Shandong and Hebei. Table 3 shows the pork production in the past 25 years.
Table 3. The Output of pork meat production in China (1979-2004)
Source: Statistical data of Agricultural Ministry of China.
PIG PERFORMANCE
With the development of technology in swine production, the pig performance increased gradually since 1950(Table 4). Average daily gain was only 500- 600 g in 1950-1979, but 700-800 g in 1990-1998. Nowadays F/G keeps reducing and lean percentage in carcass increasing.
Table 4. The change of commercial pig’s production performance in China
Source: Xiong (1998).
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
There are 4 main regions of swine production in China: Changjiang River Area ( including provinces of Sichuan, Chongqing, Anhui, Hunan, Jiangxi, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hubei), North China (including provinces of Hebei, Shandong, Henan), Northeast China (including provinces of Liaoning, Jiling, Helongjiang) and Southeast China (including provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan)( Table 5). Changjiang River Area and North China are main regions of pork production and supply. Northeast China is becoming a new region.
Table 5. Geographical distribution of swine production in China
Source: Statistical data of Agricultural Ministry of China
The top ten provinces of pork production were Sichuan (5.512 million tons), Hunan (3.718 million tons), Henan (3.229 million tons), Shandong (2.859 million tons), Hebei (2.428 million tons), Guangxi (2.068 million tons), Jiangsu (2.057 million tons), Hubei (1.935 million tons ), Anhui (1.848 million tons) and Jiangxi (1.435 million tons) in 2000. In 2002, they are Sichuan (4.589 million tons ), Hunan (3.969 million tons ), Henan (3.665 million tons), Shandong (3.148 million tons), Hebei (2.652 million tons), Guangdong (2.258 million tons), Hubei (2.188 million tons ), Jiangsu ( 2.174 million tons), Anhui (2.012 million tons), and Yunnan (1.959 million tons ).
The provinces, which produced over 30.00 million heads of finisher pigs during the period from January to September of 2004, are Sichuan (54.67 million), Hunan (51.42 million), Henan (46.46 million), Shandong (32.06 million) and Hebei (30.60 million) .
PATTERNS OF SWINE PRODUCTION
There are three main patterns in swine production in China.First one is individual family pattern. Each family of farmer feeds 1-5 pigs. Swine production was only side occupation for manure fertilizer and for farmers own meat consumption. Grain byproducts, vegetables, forages and food residues are main feed sources.
Commercial concentrates and feed additives are sometimes used by some farmers. Although the productivity is low for this pattern, the total number of pigs produced by this pattern accounts for 70% of national total. The second pattern is specialized pig producers. Each producer produces annually 100-3000 finisher pigs. 25 % slaughter pigs in China are from this pattern. Commercial complete feeds and concentrates are major feed sources. The third pattern is intensive pig farms. Farm size is generally over 5000 pigs. DLY crossbred pigs are dominantly fed for meat.
Pig feeds are almost entirely complete feeds from feed manufacturers. Pig performance is close to international level.
The number of sized pig farms is increasing gradually from 1999 to 2001, see Table 6.
Table 6. The size of pig farms in China
Source: Statistical data of Agricultural Ministry of China.
THE SWINE BREEDS
There are many swine breeds in China. Farmers usually utilize local breeds or two-way crossbreeds of local with foreign breeds. Specialized pig producers feed two-way or three-way crossbreeds. Large-sized pig farms use three-way crossbreeds or specified commercial lines.
There are many local swine breeds in China, which are classified geographically into Northern Type, Central Type, Coastal Type, Southern Type, Southwest Type and Plateau Type. The native Chinese breeds have some excellent characteristics. The first outstanding characteristic is the high reproductivity. For instance, Meishan sows could deliver 13 piglets for the first birth and around 16 pigs from second birth. For this reason, Meishan sows are used worldwide. The second feature is high meat quality. Chinese local pigs are characterized as tenderness, juiciness, slender muscle fiber, marbling, and fragrance for the meat. PSE occurs rarely. The third advantage is the high resistance to adverse circumstance. After long time of natural and artificial selection, Chinese local pigs have higher ability to resist cold or hot environment, to tolerate poor nutrition, and to digest feeds of high fiber content. But Chinese local pigs have significant disadvantages such as low growth rate, poor feed utilization, low lean percentage.
Foreign or import breeds include Landrace, Yorkshire (Large White), Duroc.
They are mainly used to crossbreed with local pigs to improve growing-finishing performance. Many new varieties or specified lines are successfully selected such as Shanghai White, Harbin White, Sanjiang White, Hubei White, Zhejiang White and Beijing Black. They are characterized of faster growth, better feed conversion and higher lean percentage compared to pure local breeds.
However, China is now extending hybrid of foreign breeds. Especially for large farms, DLY is the first preference for meat production. Under current feeds and feeding systems, DLY pigs are able to reach 100kg liveweight at about 165 days of age with 2.8 kg feed consumed per kg bodyweight gain and 62% lean in carcass.
Central and provincial levels of Pig Performance Test Station systems have been established to test and improve pig performance.
At present, 70-80% of the total national pork production is from two-way hybrid between local and import breed, and about 20% from DLY.
Pork Markets
PORK CONSUMPTION IN CHINA
China is a large country not only in the pork production, but also in pork consumption . In the world, about 98% of the pork yield of China was consumed by Chinese. The amount of pork possessed per capita was elevated by 206.2% during the period from 1981 to 1990 and by 455.21% from 1990 to 2000 compared to the period from 1949 to 1960. In 2000, the national total amount of the pork consumption was 41.6 million tons, 19.45 kg per capita. Per capita consumption was 20.18 kg in 2001 and 20.04 kg in 2002. It is predicted that China would consume 63 million tons pork meat in 2010.
Pork consumption ranks the top in the total meat consumption in China although the proportion is gradually decreased(Table 7).
There are three kinds of live pig markets, Hong Kong and Macao market, interprovincial market and intraprovincial market.
Hong Kong and the Macao have large demand for pork. Only 4% of total demand is self-produced, 96% is imported from Mainland.
Table 7. The ratio of the pork consumption to the total meat consumption
Source: Statistical data of Agricultural Ministry of China.
Because of the rapid progress in the economy, the high increase in the population and the high income of the citizen, huge cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Wuhan have the large demand for the lean type meat. The amount of pork produced by themselves can not meet their need. 30-50% of total demand is imported from other provinces. These cities are main interprovincial market.
Intraprovincial market is the major market for pork. About 50-80% pork is consumed locally. Due to the great variations of pig productivity and citizen income, pork quality and consumption custom vary considerably. For example, local market consumes large amount of fat pork and internal organs of pigs.
Pig slaughter system has been changed greatly. The government monopolized the slaughtering and pork trade before 1985. Private slaughter houses developed from 1985 to 1992. Since 1992, slaughtering admission system was established. Pig slaughter can only be allowed at the sites approved by governments. At present, there are 40,000 approved slaughter houses over the country with the majority being little scale and few being moderate mechanization.
There are 3000-4000 meat processing enterprises in China at present. The total yield of the processed meat in 2001 was about 3.5 million tons, which accounts for 8.4% of the total pork production. Main processing products are cool carcass. Deep procession is not well developed. Products include pickle meat, sausage, ham cuts, and are sold to supermarkets in huge cities such as Beijing, Shanghai . All over the country there are about 500 production lines to produce the ham sausage. Some enterprises have the capability to produce more than 100 tons per day.
PORK EXPORT
Present Condition
In 1999, the amount of pork export was 80,700 tons, 1.57% of the total amount of the world. Although the amount increased slightly in 2002 (293,200 tons), the ratio to the total amount of the world only was 3.77%.
The ratio of the exported pork to the total yield of China was only 0.68%.
The pork is only exported to the adjacent countries or regions such as Hongkong, Macao, Russian etc. The condition of import and export of pork in China is showed in the Table 8.
Table 8. Export and import of pork in China (Unit: ten thousand tons)
Source: Statistical data of Agricultural Ministry of China.
Structure of pork export
In recent years, the structure of pork export of China has been improved. Table 9 showed the present structure of the pork export. According to Customs of China, in the 1990’s, 2~3 million live pigs were exported per year. By the year of 2003, total pork export was 30.69 ten thousand tons, the total income of the foreign exchange was 6.55 hundred millions USD. From January to June of 2004, the export of pork was 17.97 ten thousand tons with a relative increase of 9.36% compared to 2003. Import amount was 14.55 ten thousands tons with the increase of 5.48% compared to 2003.
Table 9. The structure of pork export and import in China
Source: Statistical data of Agricultural Ministry of China.
Market distribution
About 2-3 million live pigs are exported to Hong Kong and Macao every year. In 2003, total export of the live pigs amounted to 187.84 ten thousands heads, of which, 1.76 millions to Hong Kong and 0.12 millions to Macao.
Frozen carcass is the main export product, accounting for 90% of all export products. Market for frozen carcass was mainly Hong Kong, Russia and North Korea. In 2003, the amount of frozen carcass exported to Hong Kong, Russia, Korea was 7.53, 7.09, 4.69 ten thousands tons respectively.
Markets for processed pork products include Hong Kong, Japan and Malaysia. In 2003, China exported 2.95 ten thousand tons to Hong Kong, 2.56 ten thousand tons to Japan and 1.41 ten thousand tons to Malaysia.
PORK IMPORT
China also imports pork products, mainly pig offals including pig ear, feet, internal organs and pig tripe due to eating-habits. 70% pork products come from America.
Swine Diseases
Swine diseases are always a big problem for swine industry. The incidence of various diseases tends to increase and results in serious economic losses.
Main diseases occuring in the swine production of China include hog cholera, pasteurellosis of pigs, swine colibacillosis, porcine reproductive a d respiratory syndrome (PRRS), enzootic pneumonia, piglet paratyphus, pig transmissible gastroenteritis(TGE), pig circovirus (PCV), pseudorabies.
HOG CHOLERA ( SWINE FEVER)
The number of pig died from various diseases in China accounts for 8%- 10% of total death. One third of death from diseases is caused by hog cholera. Since China succeeded to develop lapinized hog cholera attenuated vaccine in 1950s, hog cholera has been effectively controlled. But it appears occasionally in recent years, and the epidemic situation in some places is very complicated, and often coincident with piglets’ paratyphoid. There are no high effective drugs to treat hog cholera at present.
Prevention by vaccine inoculation is the most important and effective means.
PASTEURELLOSIS OF PIGS
This disease can occur throughout the year. Pasteurellosis vaccine is extensively applied all over the country, and accordingly this disease is well controlled in China. However, secondary infection of this disease is sometimes unavoidable, often coincident with hog cholera, swine enzootic pneumonia and swine erysipelas.
The basic measure to present this disease is to improve feeding management and environmental sanitation. Vaccination using aluminum hydroxide inactivated pasteurellosis vaccine is essential. Sick pigs should be isolated and died pigs be buried or burned.
PORCINE REPRODUCTIVE AND RESPIRATORY SYNDROME(PRRS)
The main characteristics of PRRS are poor reproductivity with features of early birth, stillbirth and high death rate (up to 40%) of baby pigs. If other diseases are infected together or secondarily, death rate would even be further higher.
There are no effective drugs to treat PRRS at present . Vaccination is an important way to prevent PRRS. Baby pigs are usually vaccinated with attenuated vaccine, and boars and healthy pigs with inactivated vaccine.
PIG CIRCOVIRUS DISEASE ( PCV )
At present there are several PCV2-related clinical symptoms in China, such as piglet multi-system wane symptom (PMWS), infectious congenital tremors (CT), pig dermatitis and nephropathy symptom (PDNS). The incidence and death rate are showed in Table 10.
Table 10. Incidence and death of PCV-related symptoms
Source: Statistical data of Agricultural Ministry of China.
There is no effective ways to control this disease. Preventions include good feeding and management, clean environment, disinfection of tools, isolation of infected pigs.
PIG ENZOOTIC PNEUMONIA
The incidence of the disease is 30%-50% in China. And the infection rate is up to more than 75%. Death rate is not high generally. Poor feeding management or disease infections can lead to serious death with up to 5- 30% death rate.
Effective prevention is to vaccinate healthy pigs with attenuated or inactivated vaccines. Infected pigs must be isolated immediately.
SWINE COLIBACILLOSIS
Piglet diarrhoea
The incidence of diarrhea is becoming higher in recent years than before. Piglets’ mortality is about 15%. E.coli. K88ac-LTB double gene vaccine, K88-K99 double gene vaccine and K88- K99-987P inactivated vaccine are available in China at present.
Pig edema
In recent years, pig edema disease is prevailing in some area. Group incidence is up to 4% with mortality up to 98%. For some farms, incidence can be 10- 14% for piglets and mortality ,up to 100%. Piglets should be intramuscularly injected with locally bacterial strain vaccines or with local bacterial strain multivalent inactivated vaccines at 10-15 days old. Another way is to apply antibiotic or the traditional Chinese medicine.
Feed Production
FEED INDUSTRY
With the development of pig production, the feed industry of China also gets stable progress. According to statistic from Chinese Feed Industry Yearbook, total feed output increased from 68.73 million tons to 87.12 million tons with 6.11% of average annual increase rate from 1999 to 2003.
Commercial feeds are composed of 75% compound feeds, 22% concentrates and 3% premixes (Table 11).
The structure of feed products is 35% swine feed, 50% poultry feed, 10% aquatic feed, and 3% ruminant feed and 2% other feed. The quantity of total feed output can only meet 20% feeds required to produce the current amount of animal products. It is predicted that total feed required will be 200 million tons by 2015 if popularization rate is 50%. Therefore, there will be a great space to develop feed industry.
The total number of feed manufacturers with production capacity of over one ton per hour is around 13,000., among which CP, Xiwang, Liuhe,Tongwei, Wenshi are among the top ten. Guangdong, Shangdong and Sichuan are the top three provinces of feed manufacture.
Table 11. Feed production in China from 1999 to 2003 (million tons)
Source: The Institute of Information of Feed Industry of China.
FEED INGREDIENT
Energy feeds
Energy feedstuffs include corn, wheat, rice, sorghum, and so on. In China, 70%~85% corn is mostly used for feed. In 2003, the amount of corn used for feed reached 98.00 million tons(Table 12). Experts predict 123 million tons corn will be consumed as animal feed in 2005. This figure is higher than the actual corn output of this year, indicating that corn import is inevitable.
Table 12. Corn output and amount for feed in China (1999-2003)
Source: The Institute of Information of Feed Industry of China
China is a corn exporter.
The amount of corn exported increased rapidly during the middle of 1980s. China exported 10.34 million tons corn in 1992, accounting for 10.8% of total production and 14.0% of the world total corn trade. Since the domestic demand for corn is considerably enhanced these years, corn export decreases and will continuously decrease.
Protein resources are deficient in China. At present, protein resources mainly depend on importing from other countries, for example, 70% fish meal, soybean meal and synthesized amino acids for feeds are imported.
Soybean meal is main protein source. Although soybean output keeps increasing since 1996 In China, reaching record level of 16.4 million tons in 2002, most soybean needed for feeds was imported. The amount of import was 13.94 million tons in 2001, and declined to 11.32 million tons in 2002 owning to Management Regulation of Transgenic Organisms becoming effective.. Table 13 shows soybean import during the last six months.
Table 13. Soybean import during the last six months
Source: The Institute of Information of Feed Industry of China
Fish meal is the most widely utilized animal protein. The total domestic output of fish meal is about 0.35-0.40 million tons each year, meeting one third of total consumption. Two third of fishmeal for animal feed is imported, amounting 0.9-1 million tons each year(Table 14). Peru and Chile are the major suppliers.
Table 14. Fish meal import in 1992-2004 (million tons)
Source: The Institute of Information of Feed Industry of China
Synthesized amino acids used widely include lysine, methionine, tryptophan and threonine . Although lysine output in China increases gradually with estimating capacity being 0.35 million tons in 2005, about 0.7-0.8 million tons of lysine is imported each year(Table 15). Major suppliers are USA and Korea. Other amino acids are almost entirely from foreign countries, mostly from Japan.
Table 15. Lysine import during the second half of year 2004(tons)
Source: The Institute of Information of Feed Industry of China
By-product feeds
Plant by-products produced in processing industries are used largely as feeds, including rice byproduct (rice bran, rice hull, rice bran meal, rough rice, broken rice), wheat byproduct(wheat bran, wheat middling and reddog), oil seed meals (rapeseed meal, cottonseed meal, sesame meal, peanut meal, sunflower meal, benne meal, rubber meal, coconut meal, palm meal), other byproducts(distillers dried grain, brewers dried grain, by-product of corn starch, molasses, sugar beet lees, sugar cane lees). Nutritive values vary considerably. Some may be regarded as energy feed, such as rice byproducts, wheat byproducts, molasses; some as protein feed, such as oilmeals; some as roughages. Plant byproducts are utilized either directly as animal rations or to be an ingredients of commercial compound feeds.
By-products of animal source mainly include blood meal, feather meal, leather meal, meat and bone meal, meat meal, which mainly produce in slaughter factories, leather industries. According to statistic in China, there is nearly 2.5 million tons of fresh animal blood each year, which can be used to produce 0.5 million tons blood meal. The amount of raw materials to produce meat and bone meal reaches 0.3 million tons each year.
There are stem, leaf and hull of plants used for feed, include crops (paddy, corn, sorghum, legume, peanut), potato, vegetables (cabbage), trees. Farmers directly utilize green vegetables and pastures as animal feeds . According to statistic in China, there is 700-800 million tons of straw of crop each year, 1/5 of which is used for feed. Vine of sweet potato is rich, about 80 million tons fresh sweet potato vine each year, which can produce 10 million tons dry sweet potato vine meal.
Prospect of swine production in China over the next years
Swine production in China in the next decade will be developed to be in harmony with Chinese social and economic development levels. The number of pigs raised will be kept relatively stable, but productivity , pork quality and benefits will be the emphasis of near future swine production. Several developing trends of swine production are highlighted as follows.
FEEDING SYSTEM
Specialized middle-size pig production will be promoted. Farmers feeding on family basis will be joined into the pattern of company + production base + farmer. Two or three-way crossbreeding pigs are mainly recommended to improve growth performance and lean percentage. Complete feeds and concentrates will be further popularized.
FEED SAFETY AND PORK QUALITY
The largest hinders for pork export is pork safety quality. To eliminate residues of drugs, heavy metals and microorganisms in pork will be the key tasks. It is expected that there will be more regulations and laws to ensure feed safety and pork quality. Growth promoters will be strictly controlled. Medication and feed quality control will be further perfected. HACCP system will be applied into feed manufacture, feeding process and meat processing. New theory and technology of animal nutrition are going to play more important role in swine production.
DISEASE CONTROL
Emphases will be put on highly effective swine disease prevention. Improvement of swine disease monitor technology, development of effective vaccines against infectious diseases, establishment of SPF program will be main works.
PIG PERFORMANCE
By applying comprehensive sciences and technologies of swine production, pig performance will be improved to a large extent. The goals attained by 2010 will be as follows.
• Each sow provides 18-20 commercial pigs a year.
• Finisher pigs reach 100 kg bodyweight at 160-165 days of age.
• Feed conversion rate for growing-finishing pigs is 2.8-3.0, for whole farm 3.2-3.4.
• Lean meat percentage of carcass is 62-64%.
• Marketing rate of fattened stock is more than 160%.
References
Author: CHEN DAI-WENChen Dai-wen. Key technologies of swine production. Sichuan Science and Technology Publishing Press, 2003
Hu Wen-hui. Current Situation and Prospect of China’s Feed Industry. http:/ /www.chinafeed.org.cn
Li De-fa. Modern Feed Production. Chinese Agriculture Publishing Press, 1997
Tang Shi. Modern industrial management is necessary trend in developing swine production.
Wang Jun, et al. Current situation in 2003 and future development of swine production in China. Modern Animal Agriculture [J], 2003(1):1-3
Xiong yuanzhu. Swine production in China, 1998, http://www.paper.ed.cn.
Zhang Hong-fu. On animal production and its technology after joining WTO in China. Feed Views [J], 2002, (24): 6-9
Zhang Zi-yi. Feed Science in China. Chinese Agricultural Publishing Press, 2000 Zhang Zi-yi. Strategic significance of traditional animal feeding on ecological agriculture. Feed Views [J], 2003, (1): 6-6
Zhou An-guo. Feed Manual. Chinese Agricultural Publishing Press, 2002
Ph.D and Professor of Swine Nutrition, Animal Nutrition Institute, Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya’an, Sichuan, PR. China 625014
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