For all the pork in China

“China’s strategic pork reserve is the direct consequence of an emerging, meat-eating middle class and a government determined to feed them,” is how the journal Fast Coexist called it (link below). Photo: Courtesy Fast Coexist

The Earth Policy Institute has a startling data highlight about the consumption of pork in China. Half the world’s pigs, more than 470 million of them, live in China. While meat consumption in the United States has fallen more than 5% since peaking in 2007, says the institute, Chinese meat consumption has jumped 18%, from 64 million to 78 million tons — twice as much as in the USA (see the charts below). China already buys more than 60% of the world’s soybean exports to feed to its own livestock and has been a net importer of pork for the last five years.

In late May 2013 the American company Smithfield Foods Inc, which is reported to be the world’s leading pork producer, was bought by the Chinese company Shuanghui International, which is the owner of China’s largest meat processor. The acquisition has been reported by China Daily; USA Today seemed cautiously happy about China’s buying of American hogs; Forbes hastily attempted an analysis of what it all means; Fast Coexist provided that analysis with knobs on.

People in China ate 53 million tons of pork in 2012, which is six times as much as in the USA. On a per person basis, consumption in China first eclipsed that in the USA in 1997. Now the average Chinese eats 39 kg of pig meat each year, compared with 27 kg in the USA. Charts: Earth Policy Institute

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