MLBA 3: June / July 2008

 

The courage to be big

 

By Eric J. Brooks
 

 

Asian demand for meat is skyrocketing but to ensure plentiful, safe supplies, the political will to undertake painful decisions is required. All the necessary, capital-intensive investments favour agribusiness giants over small farmers or traditional labour-intensive methods.

 

Driven by skyrocketing consumer demand, continuous productivity increases and ever-tightening export requirements, Asian livestock and meat processing are in the midst of a rapid transformation. The means by which livestock creates protein, the way meat is processed, what it is processed into, who it is sold to and how its waste is dealt with would be unrecognizable to someone who was in the industry 50 years ago.

 

Shi Tao, eFeedLink's chief analyst explains that this transformation in the way things are done begins with livestock rearing. He explains that for hogs, "Artificial insemination is used to improve on the quality of piglets.

 

For AA broilers, farmers choose  to rear wide-breast broilers so as to increase the meat yield. In the more modern farms, contact between birds, humans and wild animals is minimised." Similarly, "thanks to intelligent breeding and enclosures that do not rely on antibiotics to mitigate overcrowding, aquaculture grows faster with better meat quality."

 

Shi makes clear that in China, the transformation starts with the facilities livestock are housed in. "Modern pig sties are well-ventilated, feeding is automated, with temperature control in cooler regions. The hygienic environment of pigs is improved and pigs are made to move around less so that they do not require such a great quantity of feed to sustain their energy. "