The Impact of Animal Disease Outbreaks on China’s Meat Imports

Ying Zhou, Zijun Luo and Xu Tian

Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, 2023, vol. 59, issue 11, 3550-3576

Abstract: We assess the effect of three animal disease outbreaks on China’s meat imports from 1992 to 2017, namely foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) for swine, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) for cattle, and highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) for poultry. Using system-GMM and FGLS estimators, we find that outbreaks of animal diseases in exporting countries reduce China’s import of the meat products. Additionally, we find positive trade diversion and substitution effects in both FMD and HPAI but negative effects in BSE. Although these results indicate that China can accommodate its meat consumption needs through international trade now, we are skeptical that it can continue to do so if animal husbandry practices do not improve in China. This calls for major meat exporters to improve production efficiency and reduce the prevalence of animal diseases. With increasing environmental pressure and high dependency on imported feed caused by the expanding livestock sector, we recommend a sustainable diet by encouraging less consumption of meat.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/1540496X.2023.2223929 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mes:emfitr:v:59:y:2023:i:11:p:3550-3576

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/MREE20

DOI: 10.1080/1540496X.2023.2223929

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Emerging Markets Finance and Trade from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().