The impact of the epidemic experience on the recovery of production of pig farmers after the outbreak-Evidence from the impact of African swine fever (ASF) in Chinese pig farming

Biosecurity indemnification and attitudes of United States swine producers towards the prevention of an african swine fever outbreak

Animal disease outbreaks, such as the recent outbreak of African Swine Fever in 2018, are a major concern for stakeholders across the food supply chain due to their potential to disrupt global food security, cause economic losses, and threaten animal welfare. As a result of their transboundary nature, discussions have shifted to preventive measures aimed at protecting livestock while ensuring food security and safety. Emergency assistance has been a critical response option during pandemics. However, this may not be sustainable in the long run because the expectation of government bailout may encourage risk taking behaviours. Our hypothesis is that an indemnity policy that is conditioned on showing biosecurity practices would increase compliance and reduce government expenditure during disease outbreaks. We developed and launched a survey from March to July 2022 targeted at swine producers across the US. From the survey, we examined livestock farmers' attitudes and intentions regarding biosecurity investment and assessed their attitudes towards the purchase of livestock insurance and reporting suspected infected livestock on their farm. We used a partial proportion odds model analysis to examine the model. Our analysis revealed that intention to call a veterinarian, trust in government agencies and risk perception of farmers were instrumental in the willingness to self-invest in biosecurity, purchase livestock insurance, and promptly report infected livestock on their farms. This provides evidence that biosecurity compliance would increase if indemnification was tied to a demonstration of effort to adopt biosecurity practices. We also show that individuals who have been in the industry for a longer period may become complacent and less likely to report outbreaks. Farmers with a higher share of income from their production operations bear a greater risk from their operational income and are more willing to report any suspected infections on their farms. The data suggest that motivating the willingness of farmers to invest in biosecurity while overcoming cost concerns is achievable.

Life-cycle comparisons of economic and environmental consequences for pig production with four different models in China

China, the world's largest consumer and producer of pork in the world, is attracting increasing attention due to the environmental impacts of its pig production. Previous studies seldom comprehensively compare the environmental impacts of the pig production system with different models, resulting in different intensities of environmental impacts. We aim to comprehensively evaluate Chinese pig production with different breeding models and explore a more sustainable way for pig production. We use life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate and compare environmental impacts of pig production system with four main breeding models in China from 1998 to 2020: domestic breeding, small-scale breeding, medium-scale breeding, and large-scale breeding. The life cycle encompasses fertilizer production, feed production, feed processing, pig raising, waste treatment, and slaughtering. The impact categories including energy consumption (EN), global warming (GWP), acidification (AP), eutrophication (EU), water use (WD), and land occupation (LO) are expressed with "100 kg live weight of fattening pig at farm gate." The results show that driven by governmental support, growing meat demand, and cost advantage, the scale breeding especially large-scale breeding simultaneously yielded greater net economic benefit and less environmental impact compared to other breeding models especially the domestic breeding. Due to mineral fertilizer application, feed production contributed over 50% of the total environmental impacts. Notably, the composition of feeds exerted significant influence on the environmental impacts arising from fertilizer production and feed processing. Furthermore, attributable to the substantial use of electricity and heat, as well as the concomitant emissions, pig raising contributed the largest GWP, while ranking second in terms of AP and EU. Notably, waste management constituted the third-largest EU, AP, and WD. In addition to promote scale breeding, we put forth several sustainable measures encompassing feed composition, cultivation practices, fertilizer utilization, and waste management for consideration.

How Does Epidemic Prevention Training for Pig Breeding Affect Cleaning and Disinfection Procedures Adoption? Evidence from Chinese Pig Farms

African Swine Fever (ASF) is a highly infectious disease, severely affecting domestic pigs and wild boar. It has significantly contributed to economic losses within the pig farming industry. As a critical component of biosecurity measures, the selection of cleaning and disinfection (C&D) procedures is a dynamic and long-term decision that demands a deeper knowledge base among pig farmers. This study uses a binary logit model to explore the effect of epidemic prevention training on the adoption of C&D procedures among pig farmers with irregular and regular C&D procedures based on micro-survey data obtained from 333 pig farmers from Sichuan. The endogeneity issue was handled using propensity score matching, resulting in solid conclusions. In addition, the critical mediating impact of biosecurity cognition was investigated using a bootstrap analysis. The empirical study demonstrated that epidemic prevention training encourages pig farmers to adopt C&D procedures, with biosecurity cognition significantly mediating. Furthermore, epidemic prevention training was more likely to promote the adoption of C&D procedures among pig farmers with shorter breeding experiences and those having breeding insurance. Our study emphasized the importance of implementing epidemic prevention training to improving pig farmers' biosecurity cognition and promoting the adoption of C&D procedures. The results included suggested references for preventing ASF and the next epidemic of animal diseases.

The Threshold Effect of Swine Epidemics on the Pig Supply in China

The pig industry is the pillar industry of animal husbandry in China, and epidemics can lead to drastic changes in pig supply, affecting the healthy development of the pig industry and residents’ quality of life. This study analyzed the mechanism of the effect of swine epidemics on nonlinear shocks to pig supply, and monthly data on pig supply from January 2012 to June 2020 were applied to study the threshold effect of swine epidemics on pig stock and slaughter in China empirically, using the index of swine epidemics’ width (ISEW) as the threshold variable. The results of this study were as follows: (1) The influence of the ISEW over 7 months on pig stock in China was divided into two ranges, and the pig stock did not change significantly when the ISEW was less than 0.25. Swine epidemics had a significantly negative impact on the pig stock when the ISEW was larger than 0.25. (2) The influence of the ISEW over 8 months on pig slaughter was also divided into two ranges. When the ISEW was less than 0.33, epidemics had a positive and significant effect on pig slaughter, while epidemics had a marked negative impact on pig slaughter when the ISEW was greater than 0.33. Based on these conclusions, this study proposed relevant measures for the prevention and control of swine epidemics.

Public Social Media Discussions on Agricultural Product Safety Incidents: Chinese African Swine Fever Debate on Weibo

Public concern over major agricultural product safety incidents, such as swine flu and avian flu, can intensify financial losses in the livestock and poultry industries. Crawler technology were applied to reviewed the Weibo social media discussions on the African Swine Fever (ASF) incident in China that was reported on 3 August 2018, and used content analysis and network analysis to specifically examine the online public opinion network dissemination characteristics of verified individual users, institutional users and ordinary users. It was found that: (1) attention paid to topics related to "epidemic," "treatment," "effect" and "prevent" decrease in turn, with the interest in "prevent" increasing significantly when human infections were possible; (2) verified individual users were most concerned about epidemic prevention and control and play a supervisory role, the greatest concern of institutional users and ordinary users were issues related to agricultural industry and agricultural products price fluctuations respectively; (3) among institutional users, media was the main opinion leader, and among non-institutional users, elites from all walks of life, especially the food safety personnel acted as opinion leaders. Based on these findings, some policy suggestions are given: determine the nature of the risk to human health of the safety incident, stabilizing prices of relevant agricultural products, and giving play to the role of information dissemination of relevant institutions.