Dr. Arkin Wu, the director of nutrition and tech services with Pipestone Nutrition, said Chinese pork imports could return to pre-African Swine Fever levels by the end of this year due to a faster than expected restoration of China’s swine numbers. 
This Chinese pig production information came in a session on ‘what’’s happening in the Chinese pig industry’ at the recent Saskatchewan pork industry symposium 2021. 
Wu said ASF hit in 2018 and reduced China’s sow herd by 30 to 40 percent and the finishing pig inventory by about half but. However, by the end of 2020, the sow herd recovered and by the second quarter of this year 2021 finishing pigs flooded the market.  
Before ASF China typically imported about one million metric tons of pork products and another one million metric tons of edible offals. Together, it only consisted of about two to three percent of the total pig supply in China, a relatively small portion. 
During ASF in 2019 and 2020, imports quickly ramped up to about four million metric tons per year, primarily from South America, Europe and some from U.S.-Canada back then. 
In 2020 those imports consisted of about 14 percent of the total pig supply. 
“In 2021, based on the numbers in the first eight months, the import volumes are similar to 2020, but I would anticipate in the last quarter of this year the import volume would decrease because of an oversupply of domestic pigs here in China.” 
Dr. Wu said the goal of the Chinese government is to stabilize domestic production and achieve over 95 percent self-sufficiency over the next five to ten years. 
Since graduation in 2019, Wu joined Pipestone as a nutritionist for 300,000 sows and provides technical service to over 80 farms in the United States and China. He recently transitioned to an international position in China in charge of nutrition and tech services for Pipestone’s Chinese operation.  
So often, people in the hog industry in Canada and the U.S. treat the information from China’s hog industry with skepticism. Here is some background on the company where Wu works first in the U.S. and now in China.  
Located in Southwestern, Minnesota founded in 1942 as a swine veterinarian clinic, a couple of veterinarians got together and worked for independent swine farmers.  
“Today we provide the veterinarian clinic and the farrow-to-finish farm management plus nutrition, marketing and packing business.” 
The same in Latin America and China but in 2015 more into the production side of the Chinese swine industry forming a jointly owned production company called Riverstone. Located in Eastern China along the coast with four sow farms farrow-to-finish, 26,000 sows are all PIC genetics. The facilities have space to finish about 50 per cent of their wean pig production close to 150,000 finishing spaces. 

In China for about ten years, Pipestone manages sows for approximately 17 client sow farms a total of 100,000 sows primarily located in Southwestern China and along the coast of China, which are traditional provinces that raise a lot of pigs.  
“We have learned much and have a fantastic team in China and are in a much better position now.”  
Dr. Wu told the pork symposium virtual audience that it doesn’t appear that a vaccine will be the cure for ASF. 
“Right now, at least it doesn’t appear to be plus it has turned very controversial. The ASF vaccines that we hear about did decrease mortality in a growth finish barn, but if the vaccine strain of ASF gets into the sow farm it turns into a disaster.” 
Why? Because the vaccine strain circulating in an animal body at a reasonably low level didn’t kill the pigs, it dropped the sow fertility to very low in the sow herd. So those sows may produce two to three pigs per litter, and those pigs will suffer for downstream nurseries and finishers. And it’s also really hard to do the tooth extraction or precision culling on the vaccine strain because with the standard testing method it’s hard to detect the virus unless you make a whole blood connection for each animal. •
— By Harry Siemens