The village of Zhang’ao in eastern China was lively with the sound of 1,300 pigs last summer, but this year its pigpens are silent after all of the animals were slaughtered following an outbreak of African swine fever.
Set amid green hills in the eastern province of Zhejiang, Zhang’ao is just one example of how communities have been hit by the devastating disease. Swine fever has swept through China — the world’s biggest producer of pigs and consumer of pork — over the past year, cutting the pig population by about a third from 360m.
The problems for Zhang’ao’s small farmers are mirrored across the country, with the mass cull accelerating a shift in China’s $128bn pork industry towards conglomerates that operate large industrial farms.
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