September 19, 2007

 

CIMIE 2007: The decommodification of China's meat

 

An eFeedLink Exclusive

 

 

Bringing pork production to the next level was the theme of this year's China International Meat Industry Exhibition (CIMIE).

 

While the recent food scares overshadowed events, it also provided many Chinese meat processors an impetus to seek out new technologies, particularly from western companies hailing from Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands.

 

On both the eastern and western side, companies had to change the way they perceive China's domestic meat industry.

 

Yang Xu Dong, an importer and exporter with Jing Jiang Shuang Yu Foodstuffs Company Ltd. said, ''We are at a point where we cannot do things the same way we did before. Surviving in our own market and meeting overseas standards are becoming one and the same.''

 

For Yang, Chinese companies must develop a mindset that focuses on traceability while western companies have to set aside their fears about piracy to fully realise the China meat industry's potential.

 

Indeed some European companies were still held back from participating in the fair for fear of having their technology pirated. Still, a good many were represented.

 

Laurence K. Lin, International Sales Manager for Caft Foods (Beijing) Company Limited warned that,  ''If you look at the western meat industry's development, China is developing in the same way but much faster, so you only have five or ten years to get into the market.''

 

An example of the east-west exchange happening at this intense time for the industry could be seen from Denmark's Butina, which is introducing CO2 hog stunning technology to Chinese slaughterhouses.

 

In a session well attended by Chinese slaughterhouse managers, Lars Kristensen, Project Manager for Butina, pointed out that by handling pigs more humanely during slaughter, ''for every 100 pigs that are slaughtered, you get one extra pig for free.''

 

Aside from gaining several extra days of shelf life, value comes from the additional pig meat that can be harvested from a hog that is not damaged during slaughter.

 

Similarly, Lin's Caft Foods is trying to reposition the processing and value addition nodes in the meat supply chain. By supplying a technology that enables both meat cutting and preservation to be undertaken at the slaughterhouse, he believes that quality, safety, traceability and accountability can all be enhanced. The strong interest shown in such technologies demonstrates that the Chinese attendees are waking up to the need to redefine their industry paradigm.

 

All these point to the key challenge facing CIMIE's attendees: can they redefine their process technology and mindsets enough to change the nature of meat? In a market where meat is seen as increasingly suspect, innovative suppliers that stress quality give their product a critical advantage by differentiating themselves. Hence, for avant-garde attendees like Caft Food's Lin, shrewder CIMIE 2007 participants are motivated ''to turn meat into a product, not a commodity.''

 

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