The Zhongxin Kaiwei Fashionable Livestock mega piggery in Ezhou, China / Captured from Weibo
An area authorities’s controversial plan to introduce China’s agricultural expertise and assemble a „mega pig farming condominium“ has ignited outrage over animal rights and public well being.
South Chungcheong Province Gov. Kim Tae-heum signed a enterprise settlement with China’s Yangxiang Group and its subsidiary Shenzhen Suying Science and Know-how in February to develop an “AI pig farming condominium.”
To ascertain what Kim describes as “good livestock farming the place farmers put on fits,” the municipality plans to implement China’s agricultural applied sciences and gear in its 1 trillion won-scale “good livestock advanced.”
Yangxiang is one in all China’s pork business giants, elevating over 2.5 million pigs yearly throughout a dozen high-rise breeding amenities in China, utilizing AI and digital expertise.
Equally, a extremely intensive and industrialized pig farming facility will likely be designed to allow large-scale breeding and processing of pigs utilizing simply 10 p.c of the province’s current farmland, in a extra environment friendly, bio-secure and sustainable method, in keeping with the provincial authorities.
The challenge ignited criticism amongst animal welfare teams.
The Korean Animal Welfare Affiliation referred to as for the withdrawal of the proposed pig farming facility, describing the province’s plan as „ridiculous“ and a menace to each animal welfare and public well being.
The group referenced a report launched in 2023 by the worldwide farm animal welfare group Compassion in World Farming, which highlighted considerations about China’s multi-story pig farms.
“Multi-storey pig farms sometimes current vital animal welfare and well being considerations related to the confinement of a really excessive variety of animals in a barren and overcrowded surroundings,“ the assertion mentioned. „There are additionally considerations about antimicrobial overuse in these intensive programs contributing to antimicrobial resistance within the human inhabitants, the elevated threat of illness outbreaks and the following administration of such outbreaks.“
Pigs are confined at a farming facility in Korea on this undated supplied photograph / Courtesy of animal rights analysis group Conscious
Specialists and information shops abroad have additionally highlighted that prime breeding density in confined areas can result in the fast unfold of ailments and improve the chance of virus mutations, contradicting the province’s claims, the group famous.
Korea Animal Rights Advocates additionally urged the entire abolition of the challenge in a commentary launched on Monday.
„(The province) argues that it’s potential to lift extra pigs with out infectious ailments and odors even when they’re raised extra densely on the premise of ‚good confinement‘ from the skin world, however even when the state-of-the-art system is utilized, elevating a whole bunch of 1000’s of pigs in a slim area will inevitably improve the chance of illness an infection and make it troublesome to manage the illness,“ the group mentioned, including there isn’t any proof that such a extremely intensive animal breeding facility fully blocks the unfold of illness.
The provincial authorities solely focuses on the “financial perspective” of high-output pig farming and disregards the truth that pigs will likely be uncovered to poor circumstances the place they can’t train their pure habits and face illness outbreak considerations, the group mentioned.
The South Chungcheong provincial authorities’s livestock division, nevertheless, mentioned that it was merely a memorandum of understanding, and the design of its pig farming facility might differ from that of China’s.
