A resurgence of pork supplies in China following huge losses from African swine fever has wiped about $75bn off the country’s top hog-related equities, as the world’s largest pig farmers grapple with the possibility that Chinese consumers have passed “peak pork”.
The fall in the market capitalisation of large pork and feed stocks from a peak in February, according to a Financial Times analysis based on Bloomberg data, comes as Chinese hog futures have dropped more than 50 per cent since they began trading earlier this year.
Officials say that China has fully recovered from the impact of African swine fever, which first arrived in the country in August 2018. New outbreaks of the disease have continued to disrupt farms nationwide, according to analysts, but supplies have risen substantially after it effectively halved the size of China’s hog herd in 2019.