China to increase pork supply

Chinanews, Beijing, July 18 – In May and July, pork prices in many places across China increased greatly. In order to solve the problem, officials from the State Development and Reform Commission (SDRC) held a meeting with local government officials on Monday to discuss the issue of pork supply and pork prices. During the meeting, SDRC proposed that the government will try its best to increase the pork supply so that pork will not be out of stock in any places in China.
According to Chinese officials, the price hike is largely the correction of a long-time price drop. Over the past decade, the sales price of pork generally remained low. Compared with 1997, the selling price of pork dropped by 20% in 2006. Furthermore, this year, the price of grains also went up. This increased the costs of farmers' pig raising.
Last year's low pork price, the outbreak of the highly pathogenic blue-ear disease, and the price increase of grains caused the pork price to rise quickly in a short time, officials said.
At the meeting, officials vowed that China would fight against the blue-ear disease and try to increase pork supply as much as possible, especially during the Mid-Autumn Festival season and the National Day holiday. At the same time, they said, China will work hard to supervise the market to make sure that hawkers will not store up pork for speculative activities or intentionally push up pork prices. In addition, the government will strictly control the blind expansion of corn deep-processing and the export of deep-processed corn. The central government urges governments at local levels to call a stop to the new projects related with corn deep-processing. At the same time, all the current projects should be checked up thoroughly.