The consequences of excessive pork consumption in China

It is no secret that the Chinese love pork. Pigs have been at the heart of Chinese culture and cuisine ever since the civilisation began thousands of years ago. The pig symbolises prosperity, fertility and chivalry as well as being one of the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac. Those born in the year of the pig are believed to be hard-working, empathetic and generous. During the Communist era, most households in the rural areas owned a pig. This is because pigs ate waste and acted as a recycling system. According to Fuchsia Dunlop, a food writer and cook, pork has "the perfect flavour for Chinese cuisine". The Chinese don't waste any parts of the pig. Their brains are described as "soft as custard, and dangerously rich" by Ms. Dunlop. Pigs are also thought to have medicinal benefits.

Today, pork consumption has risen almost sevenfold in China after the government liberalised agriculture in the 1970s. The Chinese now consume and produce almost 500m pigs a year, which is half of all the pigs in the world. However, this will pose a danger to not only the Chinese economy and environment but also to the rest of the world.

Keeping pork affordable for the people is vital for the Communist Party because the Chinese consume so much pork to the point that if the price of pork rises, the prices of everything else rises with it. In 2007, there was an epidemic among pigs called the "blue ear pig disease" and this killed an estimate of 45m pigs. This led to a sharp increase in the price of pork and was followed by panic buying. The inflation rate, according to the consumer price index, reached a ten-year-high. Imports also doubled in that year, damaging the trade position. To combat this, the Communist party created a pork reserve. The idea was that when the price of pork becomes too high, the government can release some of its stock to keep prices at a good level. When the price becomes too low, the government can buy more pigs so that farmers can make a profit. Using statistics from Chatham House, a British think-tank, the Chinese government subsidised pork production by $22 billion in 2012.

Excessive pork consumption will also damage the environment. The majority of pigs that the Chinese consume are from China however, each kilogram of pork needs 6kg of feed (processed soy and corn) and the government has to resort to importing feed from overseas because of the scarce land and water in the country. In 2010, China's soy imports made up more than half of the global soy market. As a result, Brazil used over 25 hectares of land (some of it is part of the Amazon rainforest) to cultivate soy. In Argentina, thousands of hectares of forests were chopped down to make way for soy production.

Antibiotics, hormones and growth promoters are used by farmers in order to prevent the pigs from catching a disease. These drugs can pass through the pig's manure. The billions of tonnes of waste produced by the livestocks are the main source of water and soil pollution according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

Lastly, the waste coming from pigs contribute to methane and nitrous oxide emissions, which is a greenhouse gas and is 300 times worse than carbon dioxide. The emission of greenhouse gases from Chinese agriculture increased by 35% between 1994 and 2005. According to Tony Weis of the University of Western Ontario, Canada, "The global expansion of livestock production is one of the primary causes of climate change". It accounts for nearly a fifth of emissions produced by human activity.