Nanyang city is home to 18 major slaughterhouses of live pigs in China. According to 2021 statistics, the combined annual slaughtering capacity of the city is estimated at 211 million pigs, making it a leading ‘place-of-origin’ supplier of pork meat in the nation. Of this capacity, according Li Meng, the director of the Animal Health Supervision Office at the county, “over 2.7396 million are live pigs, ….., and that makes animal inspection and supervision at the slaughterhouses as food safety priority for us.”
An officer in-charge of issuing quarantine tickets reiterated the unswerving commitment of the Municipal Animal Disease Prevention and Control Center in ensuring ‘safe’ pork meat to the citizens saying “we have our staff camping at each of the 18 slaughterhouses 24 hours, every day, all-year round for the sole purpose of inspecting and supervising the animals and the process to assure strict adherence to safety standards and best practices.”
In this picture is Li Meng, Director of the County Animal Health Supervision Office during our interview
In response to increased incidents of meat and poultry food safety issues in recent years, the Nanyang Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Bureau has intensified its efforts to mitigate likely food safety exposure in its animal inspection and supervision processes and practices across all its slaughterhouses and the supply and distribution chain as a whole.
According to one of the senior management representatives at the Animal Product Quality and Safety Supervision arm of the Bureau, these efforts encompass “standardizing animal inspection and supervision and strengthening measures to foster performance of duties and responsibilities by our officers at all levels of the inspection and supervision process in strict adherence to standards and industry best practices in food safety.”
“The responsibilities of our inspection and supervision work are threefold – before, during and after slaughtering. Before slaughtering, we are checking the test items to ensure that the presenting pigs are free of the African swine fever and clenbuterol, in particular. During slaughtering, our officers must perform the so called "five steps and 13 knives" inspection operation, while the after slaughtering responsibilities include stamping the pork and issuing ‘qualified seal’ as an approval for distribution,” said a quality tester for live pigs at Muyuan Group. “I have learned from my over 20 years of experience inspecting and supervising animals that the process should be coordinated well from the source of the animals through to certifying the final meat product,” he added.
In an effort to foster safety, “not only is it a requirement for live pigs already certified as fit for slaughtering to be retained in the slaughtering pen for at least 12 hours before being slaughtered, … veterinarian officers from the Bureau also conduct regular inspections on them,” said a senior officer at the entrance of live pigs at Muyuan Group. All this foster food safety as a procedure or process – from the sourcing of the animals to the ‘qualified’ sealing of the final meat product leaving to market from the slaughterhouse.
According to Meng, their efforts to mitigate food safety issues relating to live pig slaughtering in the county have been fruitful. This is what he said, “I feel honored that we have had such a success in our effort to ensure food safety at our slaughterhouses, so much that, and the Henan Provincial Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Bureau has recently recommended us.
As festivities approach, demand for meat in the market increases substantially. It is not uncommon for retailers and wholesalers to consider sourcing meat products beyond their ‘conventional’ boundaries of doing business to ensure their shelves are well-stocked throughout during this high-demand moment.
Given evidence of rising cases of food safety incidents across the nation in recent years, “is it safe?” is and should be the question to all of us. To this end, therefore, demanding to know place of origin of the “qualified seal” on such products could be all you need to be safe the next time you go shopping.(Story by: Chen Jiaqi Written in: Nanyang, Henan)