Chinese livestock a growing challenge.

• Author: MacDonald, Mia
• Position: EYE ON EARTH - Brief article

China's phenomenal economic growth has lifted millions of Chinese out of hard-scrabble rural poverty. But concern about feeding 1.3 billion people has raised a new question: "Who will feed China's pigs?"

In the past 10 years, consumption of pork, China's most popular meat, has doubled. China is now not only the world's leading pork producer, but also tops the United States in meat-chicken production. The country has a farmed-animal population in the tens of billions and may have as many as 64,000 factory-type farms, compared to a U.S. total of some 18,800.

The strains of China's fast-growing live stock sector are becoming hard to ignore. Worldwide, an estimated 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions stem from the livestock industry, according to the United Nations. China recently passed the United States as the world's leading emitter of carbon dioxide, and emissions from the country's farmed-animal population will only rise.

China's farmed animals...