Farmers: China's lifting of pork ban 'positive'
By DANA HERRA dherra@daily-chronicle.com
Local hog farmers are cautiously optimistic in the wake of China's announcement last Thursday that it intends to lift a ban on U.S. pork imports in effect since May.
In 2008, China was the U.S. pork industry's third-largest foreign customer, importing nearly $690 million of products, according to the National Pork Producers Council. But concerns about the H1N1 virus last spring, commonly dubbed "swine flu," caused several countries, including China, to shut down U.S. pork imports. The virus is actually a combination of human, swine and avian influenza strains, and cannot be transmitted through food.
In 2008, Illinois was the fourth-largest hog and pig producer in the country, and DeKalb County ranked number two in hog and pig production within the state, according to the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service.
While NPPC President Don Butler hailed the announcement and called China "by far, the largest potential money-making opportunity for the U.S. pork industry," local producers stung by two years of industry losses were more cautious.
"It's a step in the right direction. It's a positive development, but how much pork they're really going to import remains to be seen," Sycamore farmer Carl Heide said, noting that much of China's spike in imports last year was due to its hosting the summer Olympics.
Russia, another top importer of U.S. pork that banned the meat due to the flu outbreak, also loosened some of its restrictions in October, said Mike Woltmann of Kingston, president of the DeKalb County Pork Producers. The markets have shown a positive reaction, he said, but it's too soon to tell if the uptick can be sustained.
"At least in the short term, it's given a little strength to the market," he said. "I don't think there's anything long term that we can determine right now."
Pork is the most commonly eaten meat in China, and the country's growing middle class means more families have the income to spend on meat. But Woltmann noted that China, where it is traditional for rural families to keep several pigs, has a massive swine inventory of its own.
"One thing you have to keep in mind is over half of the breeding stock in the world exists in China," he said. "I don't know what that means in the whole scheme of things other than that they have large amounts of pork there."
The announcement came last Thursday at the 20th annual session of the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade, led by top U.S. and Chinese government officials. Other topics on the agenda included wind energy, trade barriers and Internet piracy.
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