By Hallie Gu and Dominique Patton
BEIJING, Feb 21 (Reuters) – China’s hen farmers had been wanting ahead to a bumper 12 months.
However an unprecedented lockdown on individuals and items to curb the coronavirus outbreak has disrupted the brief however intense poultry lifecycle, threatening output of meat simply because the world’s most populous nation faces an enormous pork shortfall.
China’s poultry manufacturing expanded by 12% final 12 months to 22.39 million tonnes, after farmers sought to plug the hole from the pork scarcity attributable to African swine fever that ravaged the home hog herd.
About half of China’s chickens are raised by particular person farmers concerned in just one or two steps of the hen chain, quite than built-in operations.
However that has made them susceptible to the restrictions on motion and labour scarcity ensuing from Beijing’s efforts to curb the unfold of a brand new coronavirus…