Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

Chinese inspectors upped their rejections of beef, chicken feet, and pork from the United States, Europe and Brazil during 2025. Meat was rejected for containing hormones not permitted in China, failing sensory inspections, and lack of documentation or plant registration. The spike in rejections coincided with China's imposition of tariffs over the last 2 years designed to reverse losses of Chinese meat producers or to punish trading partners. China's rejections of imported food during 2025 increased 55% from the previous year. The volume of shipments rejected increased 150%. These were the largest values since the customs administration took over inspections at the border from the now-defunct AQSIQ in 2018.  Compiled from lists posted on China Customs web site. China rejected food shipments from about 75 countries -- from Denmark and France to Pakistan and Belarus. The top 3 trading partners with the most rejections -- the United States, European Union, and Japan -- are not kn...

In the first half of 2025 China increased its meat and egg production by a combined 1.58 million metric tons (mmt) from a year earlier, a moderate increase of 2.5%. Meanwhile, animal feed output during H1 2025 compiled from feed industry association reports increased by 14.5 mmt (+10 percent) from a year ago. China's 14.5-mmt increase feed output growth outpaced the 1.58-mmt growth in meat production by a ratio of 9:1. It's hard to make sense of these inconsistent figures.  [note: The June 2025 feed industry association report has a 7.7% yoy growth rate for feed output which is inconsistent with the 10.1% growth shown here calculated by comparing data from monthly reports issued last year. Growth rates for complete feed were 8.1%, concentrates -1.5%; additives 6.9%. These inconsistencies are common in the feed industry association reports, a reason for doubting the accuracy of this data.] There is no boom in demand for feed ingredients to fuel a huge increase in feed production...

Tariffs on U.S. imports are impacting prices for certain types of meat and animal feed. Reports posted on China's Feed Industry Information net note that supplies of soybeans and soybean meal are tight . The latest customs data show soybean imports for March 2025 were only 3.5 million metric tons (down 7.9 percent from a year earlier), said to be the lowest monthly volume in years. Buyers have already cut back sharply on purchases of U.S. soybeans while deliveries of Brazilian soybeans have been delayed by slow Chinese customs inspections. Soybean crush volume fell to 980,000 metric tons last week. The decline in soybeans processed constricts the supply of soybean meal available for use in animal feed. Soybean meal prices in northern China are reported on April 14 to be in the range of RMB 3,680-to-3,730 per metric ton, up RMB 200-to-230. The price in Guangdong previously quoted at RMB 3000-to-3040 per metric ton also rose RMB 200 as many northern buyers made purchases in Guangdong...

Rejections of imported meat by China's customs authority more than tripled in 2024. It is unclear whether problems in meat shipments suddenly increased last year or whether the spike in rejections reflects an effort to bring relief to struggling Chinese meat producers by rejecting imports.  A compilation of monthly reports of rejected food imports from the Chinese customs web site showed that 778 shipments of beef, pork, chicken, lamb, and deer meat were rejected at China's border last year. The spike in rejections was unusual: China's number of meat rejections had never even reached 300 in previous years (the customs administration took over inspection in a 2018 revamp of border authorities).  Source: Compilation of monthly reports of rejected food shipments posted on China Customs website. Rejections increased for each kind of meat, but beef and pork accounted for most of the increase in rejected shipments. China rejected 435 beef shipments, up from 60-to-80 rejections in...

China's statisticians claim meat output reached a record high in 2022, but meat prices and imports are still at historically high levels.  Official data show that China's meat production increased to a record 92.3 million tons in 2022, up from 88.9 million tons in 2021. The 3.8-percent increase seems inconsistent with 0 growth in feed production through November shown by China's feed industry association and a decline shown by the Alltech feed survey. China's meat prices also remain at historically high levels despite the record output and large portions of the country locked down during 2022.  Customs data also show that meat imports reached 7.2 million tons in 2022, lower than the previous two years due to an increase in pork tariffs and declining pork prices during the first half of the year. However, last year's meat import figure was still higher than any year before African swine fever caused imports to spike during 2019-20. The sum of meat output and imports ...

 The 5-year plan for China's livestock dials down expectations for the country's meat production prospects. While the plan acknowledges that China's consumers are demanding more and higher quality meat, the plan sets modest production goals. It focuses on scaling-up farms, becoming self-sufficient in producing breeding stock, stabilizing supply, disease prevention, reducing the industry's environmental footprint, filling a shortfall in fodder for ruminants, and creating farm-industry links.  The plan released by China's agriculture ministry in December 2021 set an 89-million-metric-ton target for meat production in 2025. That's an increase from the 76.4 mmt reported in 2020, but it's only fractionally higher than China's peak meat output in 2014. The 2020-25 increase represents mainly a recovery of swine production from its disease-impacted dip in 2019-20. IF these numbers are correct, China will have had basically no net growth in meat output for a dec...

Chinese officials are on alert for transmission of covid-19 via imported meat and seafood. With imports filling a meat shortage of epic proportions this year, testing, disinfection and other precautious could keep meat prices at record highs for a little longer. Chinese officials stepped up surveillance of imported meat when a worker at the port of Tianjin tested positive for covid-19 on November 8, four days after unloading a shipment of imported frozen meat. The worker was hospitalized and 156 of his coworkers and neighbors were tested (results not released yet). Officials in China have been on guard against transmission of new covid-19 outbreaks through frozen food most of this year, following covid-19 outbreaks at meat processing plants in exporting countries such as Germany, the United States and Brazil.  On November 6, local officials in Dezhou, a city in northern Shandong Province, tested a shipment of German pork knuckles and found four samples with weak positive covid tes...

Chinese customs authorities have been announcing seizures of smuggled meat products. This crackdown began in 2019 and seems to reflect a surge in smuggling prompted by a spike in Chinese meat prices last year that increased the trade's profitability. The inspection bureau of the Huangpu port in Guangzhou says it has arrested 36 suspects and seized 4582 metric tons of frozen beef, chicken feet, and pork stomachs in a six-month crackdown. Customs and police jointly mobilized 458 officers to conduct 62 operations in Guangzhou, Dongguan, Shantou, Shenzhen and Guilin over the past six months. They arrested 36 suspects, bringing down this "huge gang" "in one fell swoop." Officials say a suspect received shipments of beef in Hong Kong, then transferred them to ports in Guangdong and stored them in warehouses. Customs inspectors say they saw large amounts of meat in boxes with foreign labels stored in a warehouse with fraudulent documents and inspection certificates,...

China's pork output is down 17 percent in Q1-Q3 2019, but the decline accelerated to 42 percent during the third quarter, according to data released by the country's National Bureau of Statistics. September consumer price data show an increase in all meat prices, led by a 69-percent increase in pork costs. The Bureau's economic report on the third quarter of 2019 included estimates of meat output for the first three quarters of 2019 and percentage changes from a year earlier. The country produced 31.8 million metric tons of pork in the first three quarters of 2019, down 17.2 percent from the same period in 2018. Poultry output was 15.39 mmt, up 10.2 percent. Beef and mutton output were a combined 7.9 mmt and rose at a slower pace of 2-to-3 percent. Egg output increased 5.5 percent. The Bureau did not report any animal inventories or number of animals slaughtered. China Livestock Production, Q1-Q3, 2019 Item Q1-Q3 output Change from year earlier...

Meat smugglers continue to evade Chinese authorities, but shipments are smaller and more fragmented after several years of elevated enforcement efforts, customs officials say. Customs authorities publicized several seizures of smuggled meat in January, ahead of the spring festival holiday: On January 22, authorities in Nanning intercepted a caravan of 7 small vans and a large truck packed with 8,000 kg of beef, beef offal, and chicken feet with foreign-language labels. Three drivers were arrested.  On January 27, police seized a truck near a tollbooth in Poshan City, Yunnan Province that was loaded with 30,000 kg of pork labeled in foreign language and lacking inspection and customs documentation.  On January 30, Hong Kong authorities seized a fishing boat carrying 200,000 kg of smuggled frozen meat.  Vans intercepted in Guangxi Province reportedly carried 1000 kg each of smuggled meat. Also in January, customs officials reported to State media that their...

Trade in smuggled meat keeps some restaurant operators in business, according to an August 10 report by China's Ban Yue Tan ( Comment ) online magazine. China's small restaurant owners and processors struggling to remain profitable may be the most vulnerable to China's tariffs on imports from the United States. As tariffs rise higher, the incentive to smuggle is increased proportionately and China's customs authorities say they are cracking down (again). The Comment reporter said most of the 40 merchants he interviewed in two wholesale meat markets in Chongqing--a major hub of commerce in southwest China--sold both legal and smuggled frozen meat products. Smuggled products included frozen pork, beef and poultry. Vendors asked the Comment reporter, "Do you want [meat] with a certificate or without? It's much cheaper without a certificate." The product without certificates was smuggled meat that lacked import clearances and inspection documents. Th...