July 22, 2014
Japan looks to international pork import to meet local demand
Japan is considering overseas pork imports to meet demand as the country suffers the loss of over one million local pigs to porcine epidemic diarrhoea (PED) outbreaks.
Outbreaks are still reported, the latest in the Ehime prefecture. Last week, around 330 piglets died from PEDv at a farm in Saijo, northwestern Shikoku. This was the seventh outbreak in the prefecture but losses are expected to be lower this time as pigs on the farm have been vaccinated. This was not the case on farms where previous outbreaks have occurred.
About 70% of farms in region have been vaccinated since mid-May.
After an absence of seven years, the first outbreak of PED in Japan occurred in October 2013 on the southern island of Okinawa. The first outbreak in Ehime prefecture was confirmed in April 2014. Supplies of the vaccine are reported to have been insufficient as the disease spread rapidly across the country.
Japanese porkproduction may be down by as much as 5% for the last three months of 2014 due to PED. This is pushing up the price of local pork and increasing demand for imports, said Kenji Morita, director at the ministry''s meat and egg division in Tokyo.
Pork imports for the first five months of this year were up by almost 8% to more than 331,000 tonnes, according to Japan''s ministry of agriculture.
The US is the leading exporter of pork to Japan, according to the US Meat Export Federation. The latest statistics - for the first five months of 2014, show Japan imported more than 780,000 tonnes of US pork, which is 2% more than in the same period of 2013 and the value of that trade was up 3%.
For the month of May 2014, the volume of US pork imported by Japan was 37,880 tonnes or 7% more than the same month of last year. The value of those imports was 11% higher at US$177.5 million.
The number of PED cases in Japan have now reached 1.17 million, including more than 343,000 deaths, according to Japan''s animal health division. Outbreaks have occurred in Kagoshima and Miyazaki, the country''s top pig-producing prefectures, as well as other regions.
By the end of April 2014, 55 PED outbreaks in 33 outbreak clusters involving 381 pigs had been reported by the Japanese ministry of agriculture to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE).
In early May, the ministry reported to OIE that the disease was ''unlikely to be contained and is now considered to be endemic''.