Skip to main content

Shuanghui's Morality Pledge

Shuanghui Group, China's largest meat-processing company, was recently caught selling pork tainted with illegal feed additives.

Ironically, in January 2009 Shuanghui was a key company in launching a "moral food company" campaign. This event came several months after the melamine crisis broke, so apparently it was aimed at restoring consumer confidence in food. The campaign was organized by the Central Civilization Office, a communist party propaganda organization. The Shuanghui site still has a special section devoted to the morality campaign.

The Shuanghui "moral company" event consisted of a big meeting attended by company executives, the vice mayor of Luohe City (Shuanghui's home base), officials from the Agency for Quality Inspection and Quarantine, and civilization office officials. There was much pomp and pageantry.

The main theme was Shuanghui Group's commitment to be a moral company of integrity. Shuanghui made "a solemn commitment" to the entire society through spiritual civilization media: “Adhere to business integrity, Abide by company morality; manufacture and sell food products with assurance; improve service system, have a responsibility to consumers.”

Shuanghui promised to keep in mind its responsibility to improve food safety over the entire industry chain, especially by controlling animal-raising.

Executives and factory workers made speeches and signed a giant copy of the company pledge. The company's six subsidiaries were hooked up by video. Workers lined up on the factory floor and recited a pledge to use safe practices and uphold their commitment to society.


The chairman of Shuanghui signs the morality pledge


The chairman recites the pledge with workers


Factory workers recite the pledge. The banner reads, "strict business management, manufacture and sell food with assurance."


Workers at a Shuanghui farm pledge. "Create green animal husbandry, supply pork with assurance."

Comments

seema said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

Popular posts from this blog

China's Vanishing Soybean Self-Sufficiency Rhetoric

Chinese propagandists appear to have given up on soybean self-sufficiency now that China has gained the upper hand over the U.S. on the soybean trade war front. The barrage of Chinese articles about finding soymeal substitutes, low protein animal diets, corn-soy intercropping, etc. has quietly faded from Chinese media. China's plan to bolster soybean self-sufficiency actually failed, but Brazil's bottomless soybean supplies nevertheless enabled China to snub U.S. soybean producers during last year's trade war. Xi Jinping now is free to make offers of soybean purchases to President Trump in trade negotiations without appearing to do so from a weak position. Mission accomplished, but not in the way Chinese strategists planned. Back in 2019--at the height of the first U.S.-China trade war--China's "Number 1 Document" announced a "soybean revitalization plan" to increase self-sufficiency in soybeans. Soybeans were pronounced to have strategic significanc...

Xi Jinping's Doctoral Thesis

Xi Jinping is the vice president and presumed next president of China but little is known about him. In this post the dimsums blog offers its contribution to the genre of Xi Jinping-ology by conveying Xi's decade-old views on agricultural markets. Ten years ago Xi Jinping wrote a thesis, "Tentative Study of Agricultural Marketization" (中国农村市场化研究) for a Doctor of Law degree at Tsinghua University in Beijing, a top breeding-ground for Chinese officials. The dimsums blogger has spent several hours poring over the 200-plus page tome to see what it reveals about Dr. Xi. The thesis is remarkably close to what China has been doing lately in agricultural policy, suggesting that Xi (or the person who actually wrote the thesis) has a major say in policy or is at least in agreement with what's being done. There is nothing adventurous, controversial (or insightful) in the thesis. It seems to be the work of a wonkish technocrat who is not prone to talk out of turn or wander from...

Divergence in U.S. & Chinese egg prices

High egg prices are a hot topic in the United States. China, in contrast, has a glut of eggs and depressed prices.  The March 14, 2025 USDA Agricultural Marketing Service weekly eggs market overview reported that U.S. egg prices continued declining during the second week of March as the supply situation improved. No significant highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreaks have occurred in March and U.S. egg demand is relatively light. The average U.S. wholesale price for Grade A large white eggs was $4.15 per dozen, down sharply from their February peak.  Until 2021, Chinese and U.S. wholesale egg prices had been roughly equal at about $1-to-$2 per dozen with no trend. U.S. prices fluctuated more than Chinese prices, so the U.S. price was sometimes higher, sometimes lower than the Chinese price after converting them to dollars per dozen.  Chinese prices converted using monthly exchange rate and assuming 0.6 kg per dozen. Sources: USDA and China Ministry of Agricult...