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ASF skews the Chinese pig market

The prices along the vast an heterogeneous Chinese geography have undergone different evolutions.

According to what the Ministry of Agriculture of Spain has published in its Foreign News gazette, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China recently informed that the pig prices in China are stable, and that there are no reasons to think that the quick spreading of African swine fever is having an effect on the markets of the main protein source in the most populated country in the world. According to these informations, the prices in September were RMB 19.99/kg LW (some €2.5), which is 4.8% more than in August and 15.2% more than in July, but these increases are attributed to seasonality due to the low consumption in summer and the recovery of the demand due to the closeness to the National Holiday (the first week of October). The price in September 2018 has been 2.4% lower than in September 2017.

Nevertheless, the prices along the vast an heterogeneous Chinese geography have undergone different evolutions, and whilst in the great consuming cities such as Beijing or Shanghai the prices have increased more than average, in certain producing areas that have suffered the limitation of the movements of animals to the abattoirs, the prices have fallen up to 50%. This is the case of provinces such as Liaoning, where the price of pork dropped to RMB8/kg: less than half of the prices at a national level, according to the official data. In some of the infected areas, due to the restriction of movements of livestock, they have even had to cull healthy pigs because they were a hard sell.