China is cracking down on a black market for fur animal carcasses by turning them into animal feed ingredients. A pilot program was proposed by agricultural officials as part of an initiative to create substitutes for soybean meal in animal feed. Two years later the situation on the ground doesn't look much like the nice, neat program designed by agricultural officials. Shanghai news publication The Paper posted a video of a “shadow visit" to expose a black market for carcasses of foxes and raccoon dogs raised for their fur ( full text version here ). The 34-minute video showed lines of outdoor metal cages holding foxes and raccoon dogs on muddy ground covered with feces, warehouses piled with skinned carcasses, bags of fox and raccoon dog legs prepared for shipment to southern China, and a rudimentary oil refining shed where fat from carcasses is mixed into oil used in animal feed. screenshot from video by The Paper The video focused on fraudulent sale...
Retired USDA economist Fred Gale peers through the "dim sums" of puzzling data to provide insight about China's agricultural markets in bite-size pieces like Chinese "dim sum" snacks. See the Archive and Labels for posts on various topics going back to 2008.