In recent weeks, Western media have reported the news of a maxi pig farm being built in China, consisting of two 26-storey buildings with a total surface area of 800,000 square metres, in which 1.2 million pigs will be reared every year, breaking every record set by similar facilities already present in the country.
China and its pork consumption
The images circulating online are striking for the sheer scale of the construction, just as enormous was the investment – over 570 million euros – required to complete the project, which bets on the trend in pork consumption in the dragon country, currently just under 52 million tonnes, but estimated to rise to over 60 in the course of the next decade. For a long time, local production was unable to keep pace with the impetuous growth in demand, which went hand in hand with economic development, so much so that China had to make extensive use of imports from Europe and the rest of the world. It was precisely domestic investments like this one that have largely eliminated dependence on foreign supply.
The social cost of “pig hotels”
These “pig hotels” (as they are nicknamed) therefore seem destined to handsomely repay investors, but at what cost to society? Intensive farms are known to produce numerous negative externalities, first and foremost water pollution. Animals are then almost always absent from the equation, yet there are hundreds of millions of them, treated as means of production and therefore subjected to unimaginable suffering and often violence, hardly compatible with the concept of “humanity” and development that should define our century, and far even from the mild concept of “animal welfare” that regulations are supposed to uphold.
A sinister detail is added to the already worrying picture: this new mammoth structure is rising in the rural landscape 80 kilometres south-east of Wuhan, the place where the coronavirus pandemic originated. Due to all the intrinsic characteristics of the intensive model, including the high number and density of animals and extensive mechanisation, these farms are a fertile breeding ground for the development of new infectious agents and therefore represent potential threats to public health, so much so that the European Commissioner for the Environment, Virginijus Sinkevicius, declared in 2020 that there were «strong indications that the way meat is produced, not only in China, contributed to COVID-19».
What if “pig skyscrapers” came to Europe?
One might wonder whether this model could nevertheless find its way into Europe. Some multi-storey farms have also appeared in Italy, specifically in Emilia-Romagna, for rearing chickens, whose meat is increasingly in demand in Europe, unlike pork, whose demand is declining. However, for the time being it does not seem that this model could establish itself here too. These limited entrepreneurial initiatives have met with little success and have not been replicated due to public opposition stemming from bad odours and environmental pollution, as well as – on the part of farmers – fear of multiplying losses in the event of disease. Health regulations, in fact, require that when an outbreak emerges all animals present on the farm must be culled, as happened last year in Veneto and Lombardy, where the avian influenza epidemic that broke out in 2021 — with 308 outbreaks — led to the culling of over 18 million animals.
If these reasons would seem to hinder the spread of vertical farming, it must be said that this system offers one clear advantage over horizontal farms: the reduction of land consumption. In any case, even this innovation would not be able to overcome the intrinsic inefficiencies of the intensive model. Intensive farms – and more generally the mass production of meat, milk and eggs – have an extremely high environmental impact, which a planet already running a fever due to the many self-destructive choices of us sapiens cannot afford to bear any longer.
For this reason, this production system, which in past decades made it possible to cut production costs, is no longer sustainable today due to the damage it causes to animal and human health. It is no coincidence that it is increasingly under attack. In April, a study by the University of Bonn established that wealthy countries should reduce meat consumption by at least 75%.
Following the opposite path, towards de-industrialisation
The challenge is, therefore, to follow a reverse path, leading to the rapid de-industrialisation of the animal production sector and to the rediscovery of extensive farming, as well as a more plant-based diet. The need to ensure equitable access to food resources today depends on public support for the transition to a food system in which the role of animal proteins is greatly reduced.
A long-term objective whose achievement will require years, but some signals give hope that the journey will be shorter and less bumpy than one might imagine. The new nutritional guidelines drawn up by the scientific committee of the Spanish agency for food safety and nutrition, for example, recommend keeping meat consumption to between zero and three portions per week. Experts acknowledge that reducing consumption brings benefits both for human health and for the planet.
Just a few days ago came the news that New York City’s municipal hospitals have begun offering patients an entirely plant-based menu that reduces the cholesterol and saturated fat content of meals while increasing fibre and micronutrients. This is an initiative launched in collaboration with Greener by Default, a non-profit organisation committed to making the default choice in collective catering more inclusive and sustainable, as well as healthier, without restricting the possibility of also adding options that include meat for those who simply cannot do without it. An apparently simple idea, which nonetheless requires completely redesigning menus so that they are complete and balanced.
In Italy, Essere Animali has launched the Meno per più project, which has similar aims and has achieved significant results in just a few years in changing collective catering, raising awareness of the relationship between food, health and the climate crisis.
We at ALI will also be committed to spreading greater awareness of these issues and above all to ensuring that commitment to a transition towards a more sustainable food system enters public policy as soon as possible. A recent study by Greenpeace has revealed that Italy is still spending millions of euros subsidising intensive farms. The task seems very complex, yet this path can no longer be postponed.