August 1, 2006

China's processed meat industry has to gear up to meet rising demand

The Second East Asia Investment Forum was held in Weihai, Shandong province from Jul 29-30. This annual event was jointly organised by China's International Relations Association and the Shandong Provincial Government.

Tao Yishan, Vice President of China's Feed Industry Association, spoke about opportunities and challenges facing the country's animal and feed production industry.

China's meat processing industry has hit a bottleneck in terms of production capacity, which in a way, also affects the country's livestock and feed industry, Tao said. Despite the availability of a wide range of meat products, demand for them has continued to outstrip supply. He added that this actually presents good growth opportunity for the meat processing industry.

Currently, pork accounts for 65 percent of the country's total meat consumption annually. The average Chinese urban dweller consumes about 35 kilogrammes of pork per year, while those in the rural areas eat about 19 kilogrammes yearly.

If each rural villager in China were to increase pork consumption by 50 grams per day, this will require an additional 300 million heads of hogs. Meanwhile, China's processed meat output of 8.5 million tonnes, was only 11 percent of total meat production, compare with 60 percent in the developed countries.

Meanwhile, China's domestic feed output could only meet 40 percent of the country's livestock feed requirement. With the rapid expansion of China's livestock and husbandry sectors, feed demand is projected to hit 130 million tonnes by the end of the eleventh five-year plan and 200 million tonnes by the end of the twelfth five-year plan.