（DCS系統）和（機器人系統）及（大型伺服控制系統）備件大賣！叫賣！特賣！賣賣賣！
Rising Chinese pork demand has driven up prices for by-products including pigs' feet, kidneys and livers.
Pigs feet sell for more than $1.85 per kilogram－about double their value two years ago, said Richard Davies, executive vice-president of sales and marketing at Olymel, one of Canada's biggest pork packers.
Selling by-products can squeeze another $10 per pig from a carcass that otherwise earns packers about $180, said Ray Price, president of Alberta-based processor Sunterra Meats.
Stewed pigs' feet with white beans is a famous dish from Sichuan province, one of China's culinary capitals, while blood sausage, made from intestines and cooked with pickled vegetables, is a traditional winter dish in the Northeast.
Chinese consumers enjoy the strong flavor of offal－internal organs and entrails. In Beijing, stir-fried pig's liver with vegetables is common on dinner tables and known for its nutritional value.
In all, China consumed 55 million tons of pork last year. Although that is the lowest total in four years, imports are rising fast because millions of China's small-scale farmers have left the pork business in recent years because of falling prices.
In fact, it did not lead to shortage of pork at the consumer level. The huge domestic demand of pork ensured pork was imported.
Chinese dietary structure is such that many dishes are made from pork. It is certain that the market demand for pork is much more than that for beef and mutton, according to Beijing Central Key Trading Co Ltd.
China key to trade
China became Quebec-based Olymel's biggest export market last year, vaulting over the US and Japan. It plans to open a sales office in China as early as next year.
"Just a tweak in that market can change the game for anyone in the world," Davies said.
US pork producers have moved more slowly than their Canadian competitors to raise ractopamine-free pigs, primarily because the US is the world's third-biggest domestic market for pork.
Precisely because of that reason, Beijing Central Key cut its imports from the US, the company said. It also made it clear that any import of the pork containing this drug is not its priority.
Tyson Foods Inc and Hormel Foods Corp continue to process hogs that were fed ractopamine in part because they do not raise their own pigs.
Hormel's hog supply "comes from more than 500 family farms", the company spokesman said, many of which use the growth drug.
US firms can also send pork from ractopamine-fed hogs to Mexico and Japan, the top US pork export markets.
But many US-based suppliers are nonetheless scrambling to take advantage of Chinese demand for ractopamine-free pork.
Smithfield, the world's biggest pork producer and a subsidiary of Hong Kong-listed WH Group, has raised most of its hogs without the drug for more than two years, a spokeswoman said.
As the top exporter of pork to China, Smithfield firm shipped 300,000 tons there from the US and Europe last year.
The second-and third-biggest US pork producers－Seaboard and Triumph－are jointly opening a pork processing plant in July in Sioux City, Iowa, where nearly all hogs slaughtered will be ractopamine-free, according to local hog producers and animal feed mills.
Building dedicated ractopamine-free pork plants allows processors to limit risk of China rejecting shipments that contain trace amounts of the drug.
Seaboard declined to comment about ractopamine. Triumph did not respond to requests for comment.
The Cooperative Farmers Elevator in Ocheydan, Iowa, is constructing a new feed mill that by 2018 will produce only ractopamine-free animal feed.
"It was requested from some of the customers we deal with," said Steve Peterson, the cooperative's vice-president of feed. "The one that is pushing the hardest is Seaboard."
US hog producer Prestage Farms also is planning a new Iowa slaughterhouse for as many as 10,000 ractopamine-free hogs annually by 2018, said Ron Prestage, its president.
With the US hogs in record supply, foreign demand is essential to profits, Prestage said.
"When we have plentiful hogs, as we do today, packers prefer not to have ractopamine," Prestage said. "They want to be able to export as much product as they can."
Agencies- China Daily
