A Hotel for Pigs (Cover News 极目时间)
This month, the first documentation of a magnificent and innovative 26-story skyscraper was published - inside which a horror will take place.
The building, which looks like a luxury hotel from the outside, is actually the first pig farm that was built at height and is designed to slaughter 1.2 million pigs a year.
The world's largest pig farm located in two tall buildings has opened on the southern outskirts of Azhou in Hubei Province, central China.
In the documentation of the building - which looks like an apartment building or a tall office building overlooking the main road - 650 thousand pigs are expected to live, from which they will produce 100 thousand tons of meat.
It's actually China's solution to the ever-increasing demand for pork, the country's most popular animal protein.
The New York Times reported that the Chinese government claims that the building, dubbed the "Palace of Pigs," was opened by local authorities last October at a cost of approximately $577 million (4 billion yuan) in order to increase agricultural productivity.
The farm consists of two buildings - with 26 floors each - and "boasts production efficiency, green ecology and lower total cost", according to the experts.
The promoters of the project add that close to 25,000 animals will inhabit each level and will be transported throughout the complex using underground "pig catching channels".
This is how it looks
The company behind the facility, Hubei Zhongxin Kaiwei Modern Farming, is new to the pig and farming sector.
It started in the field of cement in general, and established multiple cement plants in districts such as Hovei and Hanan.
One of them, Hubei Xinshiji Cement, is near the new pig farm.
The company said it originally planned to invest in ready-to-cook food production, but changed its mind after a slump in China's cement and construction industries.
Jin Lin, the company's general manager, said the company saw modern agriculture as a promising avenue and an opportunity to use its own building materials to build the pig farm.
According to statements on the company's official WeChat account, the pig farm has two buildings providing a total area of 800,000 square meters. The farm has gas, temperature and ventilation controlled living conditions, with animals fed through more than 30,000 automatic feeding points at the push of a button from a central control room.
The company says that the waste from the pigs will be treated and used to produce biogas, which can be used to generate electricity and heat water inside the farm.
The workers will be required to go through several rounds of disinfection and testing before they are given permission to enter - and will not be able to leave the site until they have to go home.
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"It's unimaginable," a farmer in his 50s who lives in the village opposite the farm told the Guardian.
He said he fears the proximity of the farm could lead to an odor problem when it is fully operational.
"About 30 years ago when I raised pigs, we only had two or three in a pen in our backyard. I heard that pigs raised on these farms could be ready for sale in a few months, and nowadays it would take us about a year to raise one. I think as technology advances, that will be the trend In the future. Fast and mass production," he said.
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The "modern" pig farm, which is apparently one of many throughout the country, began to operate against the background of the increase in demand in China for pork.
Experts believe that building large farms like these is one way to replenish the country's pork stock, which has been decimated in recent years by African swine fever.
China has been trying to upgrade its pork production (it consumes about half of the world's pork) after losing up to 100 million pigs to the deadly pig disease African swine fever (ASF) between 2018 and 2020.
In a policy released in 2019, China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said it would allow the construction of high-rise cultivation facilities.
An announcement welcomed by investors, including Kingkey Smart Agriculture, which reportedly said the high production model is more efficient, bio-secure and environmentally friendly.
"Compared with traditional breeding methods, high-rise pig farms are more intelligent, with a high degree of automation and biosafety. At the same time, it has the advantage of saving land resources," said Zhu Zangyong, a professor at the Institute of Animal Science of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. .
And there are quite a few problems with it
In Sichuan province alone, 64 multi-story farms have been planned, some of which are already under construction, as of 2020. "Inevitably, the pig farming industry is moving towards a highly automated and intelligent future, and the standards and threshold for pig farmers will become higher as a result," added Zhu. .
However, the huge enclosure, which is supposed to be fully automated, managed to provoke a lot of outrage among animal welfare organizations in China, who are unhappy that the pigs are kept in factory conditions.
Their cry led to the treatment of problems related to sanitation - and it was guaranteed that the pigs would not live in overcrowding and would be able to move freely.
However, experts estimate that intensive farms on such a large scale increase the likelihood of disease outbreaks.
"Intensive facilities can reduce interactions between domesticated and wild animals and their diseases, but if a disease does get in it can break out between animals like wildfire," said Matthew Hayek,
"I've heard many reports of 'biosecurity,' 'efficiency,' and 'sustainability.' We hear the same story for indoor facilities in the US.
However, there is very little evidence that these intensive facilities have these benefits in reality,” he said.
This is how it looks from the inside:
Dirk Piper, chairman of One Health and professor at City University of Hong Kong, agreed, saying: "The higher the animal density, the greater the risk of the spread and amplification of infectious pathogens, as well as the potential for mutation.
"The even more important question will be whether this type of production is consistent with the need to move towards reduced meat consumption, given the unstoppable threat of devastating climate change," he said
. To Hobay's local television, "Our project makes it possible to reach a zero level of faecal emissions with very low greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition, our biosecurity control system, in addition to scientific nutrition, makes it possible to improve the quality of the meat in order to meet the population's demand for pork at a good and cheap level."
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