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Will lean-meat US pork be opened up? Young pig farmers stand united in the face of it

General News By Emily Carter 0 views

With ten days left until the election, whether to open up imports of US pork containing ractopamine has become a hot topic

Pork from a Shennong Award winner can only be sold by live auction, weighed by the catty

Chang Yu-cheng, 32, took over his family's pig-farming business after graduating from university and is now in his 10th year. He has a bellyful of grievances about the existing live-pig auction systemsometimes it cannot reflect steadily rising feed costs

Taiwan's live auctions focus on a pig's appearance and body shape, but the key to tasty pork lies in the distribution of marbling, the fat-to-lean ratio and so on, which can only be seen after slaughter. Major pig-farming countries such as Denmark, the United States and Japan have long had carcass grading standards.

Chang Yu-cheng says that pigs normally need 6 months to reach market, but if raised to 7 or 8 months the flavor is better; the problem is that live auctions cannot reflect the extra feed cost, so most pig farmers sell at 6 months. "If there were a good system, I would also want to raise pigs with better flavor and a meat-quality orientation, and build a personal brand."

Live auctions judge a pig's appearance and body shape, but the key to tasty pork lies in marbling and the fat-to-lean ratio, which can only be seen after slaughter; live auctions are therefore unfavorable to developing a high-quality pork industry strategy (Pig Auction Market, provided by Li Hsin-tsung)

Manure water must go through anaerobic treatment (the white bubbling spots in the photo)

Fully transparent labeling to separate domestic pork from US pork

At the end of last month the Pig Farming Association held a press conference to oppose opening up to US pork containing ractopamine

"We are not afraid of US pork, but the government should label things clearly and separate imported from domestic pork, otherwise it will destroy the livelihoods of Taiwan's pig farmers." Kuo Chia-yu believes there are many processed pork products, and consumers may not know where the pork floss or buffet pork comes from; if the government clearly labels everything from the source through processing to the end point, he does not oppose opening up to US pork containing ractopamine. "If it is clearly labeled, there probably won't be consumers who want to eat ractopamine." But if the United States demands that Taiwan not label it, or the government fails to label clearly, he will oppose it to the end.

Chang Yu-cheng, however, believes that compared with US pork, Canada, Mexico and Brazil are the biggest competitors to domestic pork, because they can all produce pigs without ractopamine and their prices are cheaper than Taiwan's, so the government must improve the industry itself and raise quality.

Li Hsin-tsung reminds us that although Taiwan is currently a foot-and-mouth disease area and cannot export, it should still keep an eye on international trends at all times, for example aligning with carcass grading systems and introducing new pig breeds, rather than waiting until it is removed from the epidemic-area list to start doing so.

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