Pigs can’t fly: U.S. high-end livestock breeders lose millions in China tariff fallout

A hog walks in a holding pen on Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021, near Elliott, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

CHICAGO - Dr. Mike Lemmon’s pigs, each valued between US$2,500 and $5,000, were supposed to be on a plane bound for Hangzhou, China, from St. Louis in April, where’d they spend the flight snoring, play fighting and snacking on oats and husked corn before taking up residence at Chinese hog farms.

Instead, many went to a local Indiana slaughterhouse for less than $200 each after the Chinese buyer cancelled the order within a week of China implementing retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. in April.

China is one of the biggest importers of American breeding pigs and other livestock genetic material such as cattle semen. These lucrative niche export markets had been growing, but dried up since U.S. President Donald Trump started a trade war with Beijing.

U.S. farmers and exporters said the dispute has already cost them millions of dollars and jeopardized prized trade relationships that took years to develop.

Though Washington and Beijing agreed to pause tariffs last week, exporters said Trump’s unpredictable trade policy has caused their companies long-term damage and could encourage China and other major buyers to turn to foreign rivals like Denmark.

“We’ve got brand damage now. There’s not a week that goes by without clients asking what’s happening with the U.S.,” said Tony Clayton, owner of Clayton Agri-Marketing, a Missouri-based livestock exporting company.

“I don’t know how we can put this back together. This is long-term damage,” he said.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai said the administration was “working around the clock to secure billions of dollars in even more opportunities with our other trading partners.”

Some farmers raise pigs specifically for breeding, a niche business within the $37 billion U.S. hog industry. Farmers pay top dollar for these specialty pigs, which have favorable genetics to produce lots of healthy piglets that can eventually be processed into tasty, high-quality pork.

Lemmon, an Indiana veterinarian and farm owner, has been selling pigs worldwide for over 30 years. He said he spent more than a year working on the $2.4 million sale of the pedigreed pigs to China. He noted they were carefully bred for good health, litter size and high fat content that leads to richly marbled, tender meat when cooked.

“It’s devastating when it happens,” Lemmon said, referencing the sale he lost.

He said he plans to stay in the breeding business, and is working to rekindle the deal with his Chinese buyer during the tariff pause.

Roughly half of the world’s pigs live on Chinese farms. The country has purchased large quantities of breeding pigs from the U.S. since an outbreak of African swine fever, a virus with a near-total fatality rate, wiped out millions of the country’s hogs in 2018.

Shipping livestock is lucrative but time-consuming. Shippers must personally fly with the animals or hire an on-board attendant who can make the rounds to keep their pricey passengers well-hydrated and comfortable during a long flight. When not working, the attendants chat with the flight crew or sometimes lie in sleeping bags next to the animals in the chilly cargo bay, exporters and farmers said.

China has also been the biggest importer of semen from U.S. dairy cows, known for producing large amounts of protein-rich milk. But “Not one unit of semen is going to China right now,” Jay Weiker, president of the National Association of Animal Breeders, said, noting China had been importing one-quarter of all U.S. cattle semen, which they use to artificially inseminate their dairy cows.

The Chinese milk industry began importing large amounts of cattle semen to improve the genetics of domestic dairy cows after a deadly scandal over contaminated milk in 2008, Weiker said. At least six children in China died and nearly 300,000 fell ill after a Chinese manufacturer added melamine, a dangerous chemical, to milk powder to make the protein levels appear higher.

Brittany Scott, owner of SMART Reproduction Services, a sheep and goat genetics company, said several foreign customers had also pulled out of deals. This left many vials of semen sitting in her Arkansas facility, frozen in tanks of liquid nitrogen and waiting for buyers.

“They are eager to do their jobs,” Scott said of her male goats and sheep. “They understand the assignment and they do really well.”

However, the work of selling their product has proven harder after Trump announced sweeping tariffs in April, and China retaliated.

The lost sales have been “a punch in the gut,” Scott said.

Reporting by Heather Schlitz, Reuters