Skip to main content

Another Meat Crackdown

China's Commerce Ministry has announced that it will be one of six departments launching a nine-month crackdown on underground slaughterhouses and butchers. The stated purpose is to improve food safety by addressing "lean meat powder," pumping water into meat, and butchering sick pigs. The campaign plans to outlaw all underground slaughter activity and regulate the meat industry. By the end of June 2012, all meat in cities at the prefecture-level and higher should come only from "designated slaughterhouses." The notice stressed that all localities are to conduct unified crackdowns as directed by the State Council's order.

This follows a Ministry of Commerce order in July that required each locality to increase rectification efforts on the hog slaughter industry, cracking down on underground slaughter. The National Development and Reform Commission issued a notice at the end of September reducing inspection fees for hogs, cattle, sheep, dogs, chickens, and ducks.

zzzz...

Shall we point out that the Ministry launched other crackdowns last year that apparently fizzled out? A similar crackdown on slaughter houses was announced in May 2010. The central communist party web site announced last November that the Ministry launched a clenbuterol crackdown (but only six departments were involved in that one), several months before China Central Television revealed that use of "lean meat powders" was an open secret in the pork industry.

Perhaps they really mean it this time.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
18 comments
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
2 comments
Read more