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One-quarter of the world’s pigs died in a year due to swine fever in China
- neonate 7y agohttp://archive.md/ItaXn http://archive.md/ItaXn
- mikedilger 7y agoOne-quarter doesn't sound like much to me as a sheep farmer. Our herds double-to-triple every year, and then get cut way back again as we turn the lambs into meat. Pigs have even more offspring: 5-6 piglets per litter, 1.5 litters per year, and can have their first litter at 8 months. "One-quarter of the pigs" should be replacable in less than a year, a minor temporary supply shortage for the meat market. EDIT: I don't disupte any of the facts of the article, and my use of the world "minor" is from the presumption that people might infer that this is a long-term problem, rather than an acute and quickly rectifiable one which seems "minor" in comparison to a long-term one.
- colechristensen 7y agoProblems being that the disease is still going and not under control. Also whole herds are being culled, producers would have to buy not just breed and some are switching to other livestock.
- mikedilger 7y agoI don't dispute any of that. I only wanted to head off a possible misconception that the headline might have lead people to believe that losing "one quarter" was going to be hard to recover from. It's definitely bad, but also easy and quick to recover from.
- shard972 7y agoYes but as others have pointed out thats a quater of world supplies. If your pigs get the virus you lose all of them. Double of nothing is nothing.
- stubish 7y agoIndividual farmers don't lose 1/4 of their pigs. They lose 100% of their pigs, as all must be culled by law if the disease is found. Recovering from this is difficult if you don't have the money or ability to take on debt to purchase new stock at high post-catastrophe prices. I think this will cause a significant shift in China from small producers to large factory production, as a lot of the small producers will not recover.
- imtringued 7y agoThat's the world wide statistic. The chance that a pork farmer lost all his livestock in China is pretty high.
- Iwan-Zotow 7y agosome swinocide
- floatingatoll 7y agoTwo other relevant HN discussions in the past week: Chinese criminal gangs spreading African swine fever to force farmers to sell pigs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21891495 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21891495 China flight systems jammed by pig farm’s African swine fever defences https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21891968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21891968
- digitalsushi 7y agoWell, as someone built very similarly to a pig, that is distressing news. This is why I don't save 100% of my money for retirement. It's good to live while being alive.
- tempsy 7y agowhat?
- mschuster91 7y agoGP probably refers to their body shape, and references people who save every dime they can while working and then not living long enough to actually have enjoyed life or retirement.
- ves 7y agoI’d assume gp was referring to the fact that humans and pigs are genetically very similar and not that gp is out of shape or something.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoAre humans susceptible to this particular illness? Or are you merely fearing the worst?
- TruffleLabs 7y ago“African swine fever affects members of the pig family. There is no evidence that ASFV infects humans.” Via http://www.cfsph.iastate.edu/Factsheets/pdfs/african_swine_fever.pdf http://www.cfsph.iastate.edu/Factsheets/pdfs/african_swine_f...
- xwowsersx 7y agoFunny to see this finally making mainstream news and the front page of HN. I worked as a research analyst at a long/short equities fund and one of the biggest bets we placed was based on ASF. The sell side was completely complacent about this, but we were tracking the disease closely and the math was undeniable - this was going to be a major, major disruption in global protein markets. Bullets of the thesis were: - African Swine Fever in China is putting half the global supply of hogs at risk. - It will take years for China to get a handle on the disease. - This will cause prices of pork in China to rise. China will have to import pork to fill the hole in order to avoid a political crisis. - As a result, global proteins will enter a multi-year up-cycle. All proteins (beef, chicken, pork) will benefit. This structural thesis could be played many, many ways.
- dman 7y agoAny examples of how a retail investor would play this?
- jankotek 7y agoClickbaitish title, most pigs are slaughtered before reaching one year of age.
- gruez 7y agoThat's a very uncharitable way of interpreting the headline. From the article body: "the epidemic there alone has killed nearly one-quarter of all the world’s pigs".
- jobigoud 7y agoWhat he's saying is that 100% of those pigs that died due to the epidemic would also have died within a year anyway. The title is crafted in such a way that you picture a whole, static population of pigs and a quarter is removed from this whole. Like we start 2020 with 75% of the individuals of 2019. As if the mortality rate shot from something normal up to 25%. When it actually was 100% all along. Without the epidemic title could have been "All of the worlds pigs died in a year due to humans killing them to eat their body parts". Not saying the epidemic is a good thing, but at the end of the day it doesn't make a whole lot of difference from an individual pig's perspective.
- userbinator 7y agoThese pigs died before they could be eaten.
- scrumbledober 7y agoa week or two ago my Safeway was selling pork shoulders for $0.99/lb. Tuesday I went back and they had whole cooked hams for $0.99/lb. I have been wondering why pork has been so cheap and to see that there is such a global shortage seems counterintuitive. Perhaps domestic farmers have increased production with China importing more pork, leaving a domestic supply surplus?
- BitwiseFool 7y agoIn my experience ham and premium meats consistently go on-sale for the holiday season. I'm guessing the roasts serve as a loss-leader so that people buy the rest of the ingredients for the family feast at the supermarket.
- jessaustin 7y agoIn addition to sibling's seasonal observations, China have had a bunch of on-again/off-again pork tariffs through much of 2019. If a pig is big enough to slaughter, it has to go somewhere. If it can't go to China, it will sell more cheaply elsewhere. In the longer term, pork will probably get more expensive.
- pergadad 7y agoScary to think what conditions those animals had to live in that selling 1lb for 1$ is even remotely profitable.
- wil421 7y agoPork shoulder should be the cheapest part of the pig. It doesn’t mean the pig wasn’t profitable. The shoulder doesn’t require much processing by the grocer especially if it’s bone-in.
- theklub 7y agoI think that's just holiday related. But I do love getting hams for 15$
- hpoe 7y agoI find this so interesting. Oftentimes we talk about wars, and treaties, politicians and warlords as though most of the fate of the world depended upon them. Yet this single outbreak of a disease will probably do just as much or more damage to China than the trade war. Now sure there are things that can be done and leaders are leaders precisely because they are halp to organize and deal with problems at a large scale like this, but there is so much that is still out of our control as humans. It is humbling to think how vunerable we still are to mother nature despite all of our progrsss. Maybe that is something we should keep in mind more, how fragile and dependent we still are as people, nations and humanity.
- gowld 7y agoThis really only affects people who are obsessed with pig meat, which is a non-essential luxury.
- unglaublich 7y agoThis is a very subjective statement.
- jessaustin 7y agoQu'ils mangent de la brioche!
- nabla9 7y agoThe loss of pigs in China affected heavily soy exports from the US, so it kind of became part of the trade war hurting US farmers.
- flatfilefan 7y agoThey say the low protein content of recent US soybeans was what affected their sales even earlier. I wonder in which relation these events stay to each other if at all.
- jjtheblunt 7y agoI read things like this and wonder what will move the tipping point to plant-derived sources of essential amino acids (thus protein) adequately to stop farming animals.
- inetknght 7y agoPlants can also become ill.
- geddy 7y ago...from contact with contaminated water, which is contaminated with things like animal shit, from farms. Plants don't just get horrendous diseases - nearly all of these outbreaks can be traced back to animal agriculture in close proximity.
- inetknght 7y agoPlants can be infected with viruses, bacteria, fungus, and of course pests. It doesn't all come from contaminated water either.
- geddy 7y agoRead the top comment here. Animal agriculture is extremely destructive to the environment, and unsanitary conditions in factory farms are par for the course.
- GlenTheMachine 7y agoThis is really, really incorrect. Many, if not most, of the major crop plant diseases have nothing to do with animal agriculture. Wheat rust, potato blight, fire blight in fruit trees, citrus greening, verticillium wilt, various other fungal and bacterial pathogens — none of which have anything to do with factory animal farming.
- stevespang 7y ago
- amelius 7y agoCriminals were using drones to make the fever spread faster, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21891968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21891968
- jandrese 7y agoThat story is pretty hard to believe. It might be true, but it reads like so much scaremongering and blame deflection.
- ajb 7y agoWow. I guess that's why China has a Strategic Pork Reserve[1]. I thought the Pork Reserve was funny the first time i heard about it, but it's not so much now. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/id/100795405 https://www.cnbc.com/id/100795405
- pergadad 7y agoNot as funny as Canada's strategic maple syrup reserve which at some point was actually stolen...
- schainks 7y agoOnly part of the reserve was stolen. There is an episode of the Netflix docuseries "Dirty Money" dedicated to the theft and the Maple Syrup market.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y agoOh. My. God. This is true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Canadian_Maple_Syrup_Heist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Canadian_Maple_Syrup_Hei.... I'm going to write a movie out of this.
- baybal2 7y agoA nice conclusion for the year of the pig :/
- swayvil 7y agoThis makes me wonder, who's factory pig-farms are more hellish? China's or USA's? You might think that China's notorious inhumanity gives their factory farms a leg-up. But there might be hellishness-ceiling that Chinese and USAian factory farms both meet.
- latchkey 7y agoThis isn't just China, it is the whole region. I've lived in Vietnam for 4 years now and have traveled extensively by motorbike over the entire country. On all of the roads, there is various livestock roaming freely. Goats, pigs, dogs, cats, chickens, buffalo, etc... they are either just on the street or in pens in peoples literal shacks by the side of the road. When driving from south to north (towards China), at some point, you stop seeing pigs entirely. There are checkpoints every few km where you are required to drive through either a wet hole in the ground or over a wet burlap sack. At some places, they spray your tires. There are signs in the villages telling people to be careful. Needless to say, for this reason and others, I've stopped eating meat in Vietnam unless I know it is imported from an expat owned restaurant. Even then, I've dialed back my meat consumption quite a bit. Eating street food has entirely lost its appeal.
- tillcarlos 7y agoExactly. You have no insights in where the meat comes from and how long it was cooled before preparation etc. Fortunately, here in Vietnam the vegetarian options are plenty and also really good.
- latchkey 7y agoHey Till, nice to see you here on hn! =)
- mensetmanusman 7y agoFascinating. What prompted all the travel? Writing a book :)
- latchkey 7y agoThank you. Very long story, but a complete change of life. Went from living in San Francisco with a big rented house and garage full of stuff to literally just having a small backpack and living in a foreign country where I don't speak the language and don't even have a 'home'. Being completely outside of my comfort zone has been amazing, best decision ever. Just enjoying a much simpler life based on minimalism. I also spend a very small fraction of the amount of money that I used to, I consider every purchase very carefully now. For the past month I have been staying at a yoga retreat center in the mountain area north of Saigon. Clean fresh air, quiet, 2 hours of yoga every day, 2 good veggie meals, a lot of meditation and writing code for my day job and commenting on HN. I don't plan on writing a book... I'd probably fall asleep if I was asked to read it. =)
- xvilka 7y agoHopefully, it will lead to better plant-based diet adoption.
- TruffleLabs 7y agoThe NY Times mis-used “swine fever” in the sub title. It should be African Swine Fever, which is not swine fever, which is really Classical Swine Fever. And these are not to be confused with swine flu (aka H1N1).
- duelingjello 7y agoMeat ag is incredibly dangerous and pollution-causing. 1. Pandemic evolution by cramming zillions of animals in unsanitary conditions, with humans interspersed attempting to clear out rivers of poop and pee. 2. Antibiotic resistance by overusing antibiotics to promote growth while compelling accelerated evolution of microbes that can’t be treated with as many classes of antibiotics. 3. Inefficient allocation of input and supporting resources: diesel fuel, water, fertilizer, phosphorous and crops. 4. Pollution of air, water and soil... pig farms especially necessitate lakes of shit that are sprayed into the air, polluting large areas of air, waiter and land. Agriculture runoff as well. 5. Climate change. Net CO2 output of meat ag is nearly that of Portland cement (clinker) production. .... 99. Animal cruelty... which doesn’t persuade many people because self-interested cognitive dissonance overcomes most people’s limits of self-control and rational thought. (Upton Sinclair-like effect.)
- geddy 7y agoThis is exactly the point I tried to make below when people kept claiming that E. coli was a plant problem and not a plant problem. But as you mentioned, it's far more convenient to talk about the dreaded potato blight and ignore the fact that animal agriculture is the biggest contributor to species extinction (through clearing of land for growing of crops to feed back to animals).
- ciconia 7y agoI'm surprised neither the article nor the comments on here discuss the problem of genetic diversity. Practically all domesticated farm animals today are bred in a highly controlled manner, and are selected for yield. Here in France where I live, almost all chickens, pigs, cows etc are pure-bred belonging to races (cows especially are registered in race registries). Take for example our local cow race, the Charolais. These cows are famous for the quality of their meat, but at the same time notorious for demanding constant veterinary care and needing help in calving. There's no doubt that all those diseases that break out every few years would have much less chance of developping into global plagues if domestic animals were more genetically diverse, but this would require rethinking our priorities, and also perhaps our relationship with those animals that nourish us.
- stevespang 7y agoHmmm, So how much carbon was re-introduced to the atmosphere from those rotting carcasses ?
- turk73 7y ago2019 was the Year of the Pig. I think someone is up to no good.
- talles 7y agoMeat prices are considerably higher around here in Brazil. My local butcher says that it's due to Chinese importation.