Vice premier underscores pork supply, food safety

Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu on Tuesday urged local authorities to make more efforts to ensure pork supplies and food safety.

Hui told a teleconference that local governments should subsidize and encourage pig breeding, including unveiling insurance for sows to boost pork supply.

The wholesale price of pork in China surged 74.6 percent in June from the same period last year due to price hikes in feedstuff and outbreaks of blue ear pig disease. It helped push up the nation's inflation to the 33-month-high of 4.4 percent in June.

There are concerns that some farmers may became unwilling to raise pigs for fear of economic losses as sows and piglets are easily susceptible to the highly contagious disease.

Hui called for tighter animal disease controls, mandatory immunization and a ban on culling, eating, selling and transporting of poultry and livestock killed by contagious diseases.

The vice premier also called for stronger supervision of food safety standards.

Food safety is a major concern of the Chinese public after a spate of food scares from parasite-infested snails to ducks and hens that were fed cancer-causing Sudan Red dye to make their egg yolks red.

Source: Xinhua