Chinese Food Will Determine the Spread of Pandemics
The transition to factory farms from traditional ones is a major factor limiting the transmission of new diseases.
Fuzzy little petri dishes.
Photographer: TPG/Getty Images AsiaPacWith the world’s largest high-speed rail network, a payments system that’s largely conducted via phone apps, and half the world’s solar-power plants, China often looks like a country at the technological frontier. When you consider how it feeds itself, though, it’s still just catching up.
About 44% of the country’s livestock in 2010 were still raised in backyards and traditional mixed farms, where they mingle with crops and other animals. While that’s a dramatic fall from a generation ago, when about 97% of livestock were raised in traditional conditions, it trails countries like the U.S. and Europe, where 95% or more of pigs and poultry are raised in so-called “intensive systems” — in common parlance, factory farms.