Vice-Premier Hu Chunhua stressed the importance of stabilizing and resuming production of live pigs and ensuring a stable market supply.

Hu made his remarks when he supervised live pig production and supply in several cities, including Jinan and Liaocheng in Shandong province, Handan and Xingtai in Hebei province and Anyang and Puyang in Henan province. He investigated livestock and poultry production and the prevention and control of African swine fever in these places.

Hu pointed out that it is a major and urgent task to ensure the production and supply of live pigs. Efforts must be made to curb the production drawdown and achieve a monthly growth in breeding stock as soon as possible to ensure supply during the 2020 Spring Festival, and strive to bring production and supply back to normal next year, said Hu.

According to Hu, the main producing areas should speed up the process of capacity recovery and the main sales area should effectively increase self-sufficiency, while the areas with balanced production and sales should be fully self-sufficient.

Hu stressed it is necessary to increase the production of pork substitutes and expand the scale of poultry and cattle and sheep farming. Also, he said that pork market regulation should be strengthened to ensure supply while taking extra care of low-income groups.

The epidemic prevention system must be perfected by building a basic level epidemic prevention team and equipping them with proper facilities to better prevent and control African swine fever, Hu said. He also underlined the importance of green production and the cold chain logistics system.