China's love affair with pork undiminished by threat of disease

BEIJING (AP) - It's dinnertime at the Northeast Black Earth Restaurant, and customers are smoking, drinking beer and tucking into sweet-sour pork chops, pork with mushrooms and the house specialty - braised pig face. If they are uneasy about a disease carried by pigs that has killed at least 38 people and sickened more than 200 in China's southwest, they show no sign of it.

"What should we be worried about?" said a 50-year-old man who would give only his surname, Shi, as he crunched on a deep-fried chunk of pork.

"We've always eaten only properly inspected meat," Shi said. "Pork is China's meat."

China is such a voracious pork consumer - from dumplings in the north to roast suckling pig in the south and every steamed, fried or boiled variation in between - that a disease scare and official controls on meat shipments only dented sales nationwide.

Most everyone went right on eating.

The government, stung by criticism of its slow response to severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in 2003, reacted with unusual swiftness when word came of deaths in Sichuan province that were later blamed on the bacteria Streptococcus suis.

Shipments of pork from the area were banned. Several officials were fired after failing to enforce the embargo.

The outbreak was especially critical in China, a country where "meat" is synonymous with pork.

Pigs are a core element of Chinese culture - a cornerstone of farmers' livelihood, the Year of the Pig in the traditional horoscope and the comic character Zhu Bajie in the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West.

Chinese farmers raised more than 618 million pigs and produced 47 million tonnes of pork in 2004, according to the China Animal Husbandry Association. Only 383,000 tonnes were exported.

According to the Sichuan Poultry Association, market sales of pork dropped by between 20 per cent and 40 per cent in the province during the outbreak, while prices plunged by up to 10 per cent as residents switched to fish and rabbit.

Cases were reported in Hong Kong and in the Chinese provinces of Guangdong in the southeast and Jiangsu in the east, but no human-to-human transmissions were found.

The victims were mostly farmers who handled or butchered diseased pigs. Symptoms included high fever, nausea and vomiting, hemorrhaging under the skin and sometimes coma. The disease struck so fast that one Sichuan farmer died within two hours of infection.

In August, the government declared the outbreak under control in Sichuan and last week, Beijing lifted its ban on pork imports from the province, one of China's biggest farming areas.

"The situation is gradually getting normal," said an official from the China Animal Husbandry Association who would give only his family name, Liu.

"It is not a bad thing for us to have experienced the outbreak, because through this event, our animal husbandry industry is becoming better and sanitation and quarantine work will be much improved in the future," he said.

And experts say the threat of disease is unlikely to have long-term consequences.

"People have experienced diseases in chickens and cows, but they are still eating chicken meat and beef," said Wang Xiaoju, an official of the Beijing Food Industry Association.

In Beijing, a restaurant run by the Sichuan provincial government suffered a small slump in business at the height of the outbreak, but has rebounded, said Yang Min, one of the managers.

Customers now line up night after night and specialties such as pork with glutinous rice and pork-stuffed buns are usually sold out.

Back at the Black Earth restaurant, the pig face dish remains popular.

The meat is first charred, then deep fried, then boiled in soup before being braised for hours in a pressure cooker. The result is a hearty mix of fat and lean pig - eyes, teeth and tongue intact - in a rich gravy that diners sop up with pancakes.

"Very few people have mentioned the sickness," said owner Zhou Jilong. "Sichuan is so far away and the outbreak wasn't that serious. SARS and bird flu had worse effects on my business."

© The Canadian Press, 2005