Cargill shut animal-feed mills in China in recent months partly because the rapid spread of a fatal hog disease has reduced demand. Most of the facilities will not be re-opened even if China gets African swine fever under control, a company executive said.
animal feed
Global commodity trader Cargill shuttered animal feed mills in China in the previous months. The reason for this decision was declared by a manager to be the rapid spread of a deadly disease, African swine fever.
African swine fever, for which there is no cure and no vaccine, kills almost all infected pigs, though it does not harm people.
The disease has killed more than a million pigs in China since the nation’s first reported case last August, cutting demand for feed ingredients such as soymeal and pre-mixes, which are blends of vitamins and other nutrients sold by Cargill and other suppliers.
“This is not a six-month trend for China to recover,” Chuck Warta, president of Cargill’s animal nutrition and pre-mix business, said in an interview. “This is a 24-month, 36-month kind of resetting of the world’s population of animals.”
The outbreak accelerated closures of Cargill animal-feed mills in coastal regions of China that were also prompted by a westward shift over the past decade of the areas in which livestock are raised, Warta said.
Most of the facilities will not be re-opened even if China, the world’s top hog producer and pork consumer, gets African swine fever under control, he said.
Cargill closed three feed and animal-nutrition plants in the second half of the fiscal year that ended on May 31, representing an approximately 150,000-metric-tonne reduction in capacity, according to the company.