CHINA’S pig herd could halve by the end of 2019 from a year earlier as an epidemic of African swine fever sweeps through the world’s top pork producer, analysts at Dutch bank Rabobank forecast Tuesday.

The bank said China’s herd, by far the world’s biggest, was already estimated to have shrunk by 40 percent.

Rabobank said China’s pork production in 2019 was expected to fall by 25 percent from the previous year, a smaller drop than pig herd loss due to the large number of animals slaughtered in first half of 2019.

Output of pork, China’s favorite meat, will likely drop by a further 10 to 15 percent in 2020, it said in a report.

Production may take more than five years to recover to levels prior to the outbreaks, it added.

Rabobank, which late last year estimated China’s pig herd at 360 million animals, said in April that up to 200 million pigs could be culled or die due to the disease, while pork output could fall by 30 percent.(SD-Agencies)