As pork prices rise and fall and production capacity expands and contracts, the performance of livestock companies has fluctuated through one cycle after another. After weathering several cycles, the industry’s way of talking about itself is quietly changing.
At the 2026 International Pork Development Forum, held in Zhengzhou, Henan, from 10 month 22 to 23, changes in consumer demand became a hot topic. Companies are shifting their focus from “how many pigs to raise” to “what value this pig can create for consumers.”
Although cycles still exist, China’s pork consumption is moving beyond an era of overall volume expansion and entering a new stage of quality segmentation and value restructuring. Companies are no longer fixated on predicting whether pork prices will rise or fall. Instead, they are restructuring value across the entire chain—from breeding and processing to branding and distribution—and using product strength to offset the risks of cyclical fluctuations.
Consumption Segmentation Reshapes the Logic of Industrial Upgrading
In the chilled display cases in the fresh-food section of a Zhengzhou supermarket, neatly arranged packs of Muyuan’s portioned fresh pork are labeled with a net weight of 200 grams, just right for a single meal. The fat-to-lean ratio has been standardized, and the pork is ready to cook once unwrapped.
Muyuan Foods—a leading pig producer that sells more than 7000 ten thousand pigs annually and sells whole carcasses by the ton—now offers this new product for offline channels in single packs of 200 grams. It represents the slaughtering division’s innovation in consumer-facing use cases: moving beyond the pricing framework of bulk live-pig trading, it breaks down whole pigs into standardized food ingredients suited to household consumption and taps into opportunities for a brand premium through consistent quality control.
At the 2026 International Pork Development Forum, Qin Muyuan, CEO of Muyuan Meat, noted in his remarks that China’s slaughtering industry is currently undergoing structural changes. On the consumption side, preferences are shifting from “having meat to eat” to “eating good meat.” Customers are making higher demands of upstream suppliers in terms of quality, price, and innovation, while changing consumption patterns are also driving slaughterhouse product formats to gradually expand from carcasses to cuts and small packages.
Since the beginning of this year, several publicly listed pig farming companies have launched a range of high-value-added specialty products for retail and food service outlets.
Wens Foodstuff Group is focusing on fresh suckling pig and roast suckling pig products. These fresh, short-shelf-life products are positioned to move from slaughtering through cold-chain distribution to the table within 6 hours, with a planned annual supply of 500 ten thousand head. The company previously disclosed that sales of suckling pig-related products are guided by market demand and are mainly aimed at high-end food service. It will continue to expand into food ingredient processing in the future.
Targeting white-collar families’ need for convenient cooking, Tangrenshen has teamed up with a food science research team at Jiangnan University to establish a nutrition-focused food product R&D center and develop specialty meat products. The products are promoted as requiring no washing, cutting, or blanching, and as being ready with the push of a button in an air fryer in “10 minutes.”
In recent years, Shennong Group has launched a range of snack products and actively expanded its food service channels, building up online e-commerce and offline convenience store sales, and creating a differentiated product portfolio based on regional flavors.
The concentrated rollout of a range of new end-market products reflects a shift in the underlying dynamics of domestic pork consumption. After the growth dividend from rising total demand has peaked, consumers are no longer pursuing only “having meat to eat,” but are beginning to pay attention to taste, traceability, convenience, and food safety.
“In the long term, the upgrading of pork consumption is a clear trend, and demand for niche products and processed meat products will continue to grow. This also requires companies to make medium- and long-term plans, proactively adjust in line with consumption trends, steadily improve pig quality, and continue to meet changing market demand,” said Zhu Zengyong, Chief Analyst for the Pork Industry Chain at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, in an interview with a Securities Times reporter.
Wang Chuduan, a professor at China Agricultural University, believes that as livestock farming companies shift from expanding scale to positioning for high-end consumer products, the basis of competition will gradually move from the past rivalry between companies over production capacity to competition between brands and between industrial systems, with consumers holding the final say.
Industry profit bottlenecks are driving a fundamental reassessment of value
Against the current backdrop ofthe prolonged downturn in the hog cycle, leading livestock farming companies are seeking to unlock value by responding to changes in consumer demand, in order to address operational pressures.
According to data from SunSirs, this week domestic livehog pricescontinued to fluctuate downward. The national weekly average transaction price for lean hogs fell below 10 yuan/kg, to 9.66 yuan/kg, down 3.5% week on week. Since hog farming entered a loss-making period in mid-9 of 2025, the loss-making period for hog farming has lasted more than a year. As of 22 10, the average profit from self-breeding and self-raising hogs in 2026 was -204.13 yuan/head, down 279.09 yuan/head from 2025.
Recently, publicly listed hog farming companies have successively disclosed their third-quarter reports, providing a more direct picture of the operational difficulties currently facing the industry.
Affected by thesharp drop in hog pricesfor its main product, Wen’s Foodstuff Group’s pig farming business incurred substantial losses. In the first three quarters of this year, the company recorded operating revenue of 721.97 billion yuan and a net loss attributable to shareholders of the parent company of 49.61 billion yuan, down 194.4% year on year.
Similarly, due to the sharp drop in hog selling prices, TIANBANG FOODS reported declines in both revenue and net profit in its third-quarter report. In the first three quarters of this year, the company recorded a net loss attributable to shareholders of the parent company of 16.58 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 738.8%.
TIANBANG FOODS stated in its third-quarter report that although the full cost of raising finishing pigs in the first three quarters had fallen to 12.63 yuan/kg, a year-on-year decrease of 0.79 yuan/kg, the average price of commercial finishing pigs was only 10.17 yuan/kg, down 4.22 yuan/kg year on year, a decline of 29.33%. As a result, its hog farming business incurred substantial losses.
“Since 2020, China’s breeding sows have gone through three destocking cycles. In the current third destocking cycle,pig diseaseshave had little impact on capacity reduction. Capacity reduction depends solely on farming losses to accelerate the process, so the destocking cycle is relatively long.” Zhu Zekun, a hog market analyst at Zhuochuang Information, said that the rate of reduction in China’s breeding sow population accelerated starting in the third quarter. Affected by losses in hog farming and piglet sales, sow farms accelerated the culling and sale of sows in the third quarter. At the end of 9 month, the number of breeding sows kept by Zhuochuang Information’s 196 sample companies was 841.23 ten thousand head, down 1.13% month on month and 7.18% year on year.
“After several rounds of cyclical changes, the potential for cost reduction in traditional areas such as feed formulation, barn management, and automated farming has already been largely exhausted. Against the backdrop of industrialized farming, companies must prioritize quality. In the short term, there is little room for further substantial cost reductions, and cost-cutting alone is unlikely to become a major source of profit growth,” Zhu Zengyong said. Given that market consumer demand is approaching saturation, the previous approach of relying on consumption growth to absorb excess capacity is no longer effective. From a long-term perspective, the core operating strategy for farming companies remains controlling capacity and promoting a balance between supply and demand in a planned manner.
Uncovering value across the entire chain through collaboration
In response to changing demand and supply-side challenges, the industry’s answer lies in “restructuring value across the entire chain.”
“The total demand for pork in the market is uncertain, but demand for higher quality is certain. Our business strategy is not to predict or bet on the cycle, but to focus on the two things that are certain: quality demand and cost control.” In an interview with a Securities Times reporter, an executive at Muyuan Foods said that high quality is defined by safety as its foundation, while meeting consumers’ needs for taste, ease of cooking, convenience of purchase, and not having to spend too much time choosing. The company’s future focus will not only be on providing pork consumers can trust, but also on offering more high-quality services and expanding its business from “selling live pigs” to “selling high-quality meat products.”
Wang Chuduan also noted that the hog industry continues to face an environment of oversupply, forcing the sector to raise product standards and upgrade. Leading companies have an advantage because they can close the loop across the entire industry chain. Turning live hogs into standardized fresh meat cuts and prepared meat products, and building brand recognition directly with consumers, is equivalent to adding a new profit stream from consumer products to the existing revenue from hog trading. It can also, to some extent, smooth out earnings fluctuations caused by sharp swings in hog prices.
However, analysts generally believe that although high-quality, finely processed pork can command a considerable premium, livestock companies cannot build out their downstream systems overnight. Brand building, channel development, and investment in processing lines all require ongoing capital investment, while demand for high-end products accounts for a relatively small share of total pork consumption.
“In the future, hog companies will need not only to raise their animals well at the source, but also to turn quality through processing into an experience that consumers can perceive and want to buy again,” said Zhan Wei, founder of Sangu and CEO of Aizhu.com. Companies that produce pork have long operated with a production-oriented mindset, which does not yet reach consumer needs; they cannot build differentiated, branded pork products from the consumer’s perspective. Brand-focused companies, meanwhile, understand what consumers want but lack a production-oriented understanding of hog farming and pork production. Companies that bridge the two with an integrated industry chain inevitably face major challenges in operating-chain efficiency and asset efficiency. Many pork products still compete on low prices with little differentiation, and building pork brands and developing hit meat products remain core challenges.
Zhan Wei believes that, for hog companies, integrating farming, processing, and food service is a basic prerequisite for ensuring pork quality and safety and improving efficiency. On this basis, companies can develop new consumption scenarios, with feedback from the end market flowing back to breeding and feeding to create a closed loop in which production is driven by demand. This is a viable path for the industry to move beyond cutthroat low-price competition and secure stable brand premiums.
At the 2026 International Pork Development Forum, held in Zhengzhou, Henan, from 10 month 22 to 23, changes in consumer demand became a hot topic. Companies are shifting their focus from “how many pigs to raise” to “what value this pig can create for consumers.”
Although cycles still exist, China’s pork consumption is moving beyond an era of overall volume expansion and entering a new stage of quality segmentation and value restructuring. Companies are no longer fixated on predicting whether pork prices will rise or fall. Instead, they are restructuring value across the entire chain—from breeding and processing to branding and distribution—and using product strength to offset the risks of cyclical fluctuations.
Consumption Segmentation Reshapes the Logic of Industrial Upgrading
In the chilled display cases in the fresh-food section of a Zhengzhou supermarket, neatly arranged packs of Muyuan’s portioned fresh pork are labeled with a net weight of 200 grams, just right for a single meal. The fat-to-lean ratio has been standardized, and the pork is ready to cook once unwrapped.
Muyuan Foods—a leading pig producer that sells more than 7000 ten thousand pigs annually and sells whole carcasses by the ton—now offers this new product for offline channels in single packs of 200 grams. It represents the slaughtering division’s innovation in consumer-facing use cases: moving beyond the pricing framework of bulk live-pig trading, it breaks down whole pigs into standardized food ingredients suited to household consumption and taps into opportunities for a brand premium through consistent quality control.
At the 2026 International Pork Development Forum, Qin Muyuan, CEO of Muyuan Meat, noted in his remarks that China’s slaughtering industry is currently undergoing structural changes. On the consumption side, preferences are shifting from “having meat to eat” to “eating good meat.” Customers are making higher demands of upstream suppliers in terms of quality, price, and innovation, while changing consumption patterns are also driving slaughterhouse product formats to gradually expand from carcasses to cuts and small packages.
Since the beginning of this year, several publicly listed pig farming companies have launched a range of high-value-added specialty products for retail and food service outlets.
Wens Foodstuff Group is focusing on fresh suckling pig and roast suckling pig products. These fresh, short-shelf-life products are positioned to move from slaughtering through cold-chain distribution to the table within 6 hours, with a planned annual supply of 500 ten thousand head. The company previously disclosed that sales of suckling pig-related products are guided by market demand and are mainly aimed at high-end food service. It will continue to expand into food ingredient processing in the future.
Targeting white-collar families’ need for convenient cooking, Tangrenshen has teamed up with a food science research team at Jiangnan University to establish a nutrition-focused food product R&D center and develop specialty meat products. The products are promoted as requiring no washing, cutting, or blanching, and as being ready with the push of a button in an air fryer in “10 minutes.”
In recent years, Shennong Group has launched a range of snack products and actively expanded its food service channels, building up online e-commerce and offline convenience store sales, and creating a differentiated product portfolio based on regional flavors.
The concentrated rollout of a range of new end-market products reflects a shift in the underlying dynamics of domestic pork consumption. After the growth dividend from rising total demand has peaked, consumers are no longer pursuing only “having meat to eat,” but are beginning to pay attention to taste, traceability, convenience, and food safety.
“In the long term, the upgrading of pork consumption is a clear trend, and demand for niche products and processed meat products will continue to grow. This also requires companies to make medium- and long-term plans, proactively adjust in line with consumption trends, steadily improve pig quality, and continue to meet changing market demand,” said Zhu Zengyong, Chief Analyst for the Pork Industry Chain at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, in an interview with a Securities Times reporter.
Wang Chuduan, a professor at China Agricultural University, believes that as livestock farming companies shift from expanding scale to positioning for high-end consumer products, the basis of competition will gradually move from the past rivalry between companies over production capacity to competition between brands and between industrial systems, with consumers holding the final say.
Industry profit bottlenecks are driving a fundamental reassessment of value
Against the current backdrop ofthe prolonged downturn in the hog cycle, leading livestock farming companies are seeking to unlock value by responding to changes in consumer demand, in order to address operational pressures.
According to data from SunSirs, this week domestic livehog pricescontinued to fluctuate downward. The national weekly average transaction price for lean hogs fell below 10 yuan/kg, to 9.66 yuan/kg, down 3.5% week on week. Since hog farming entered a loss-making period in mid-9 of 2025, the loss-making period for hog farming has lasted more than a year. As of 22 10, the average profit from self-breeding and self-raising hogs in 2026 was -204.13 yuan/head, down 279.09 yuan/head from 2025.
Recently, publicly listed hog farming companies have successively disclosed their third-quarter reports, providing a more direct picture of the operational difficulties currently facing the industry.
Affected by thesharp drop in hog pricesfor its main product, Wen’s Foodstuff Group’s pig farming business incurred substantial losses. In the first three quarters of this year, the company recorded operating revenue of 721.97 billion yuan and a net loss attributable to shareholders of the parent company of 49.61 billion yuan, down 194.4% year on year.
Similarly, due to the sharp drop in hog selling prices, TIANBANG FOODS reported declines in both revenue and net profit in its third-quarter report. In the first three quarters of this year, the company recorded a net loss attributable to shareholders of the parent company of 16.58 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 738.8%.
TIANBANG FOODS stated in its third-quarter report that although the full cost of raising finishing pigs in the first three quarters had fallen to 12.63 yuan/kg, a year-on-year decrease of 0.79 yuan/kg, the average price of commercial finishing pigs was only 10.17 yuan/kg, down 4.22 yuan/kg year on year, a decline of 29.33%. As a result, its hog farming business incurred substantial losses.
“Since 2020, China’s breeding sows have gone through three destocking cycles. In the current third destocking cycle,pig diseaseshave had little impact on capacity reduction. Capacity reduction depends solely on farming losses to accelerate the process, so the destocking cycle is relatively long.” Zhu Zekun, a hog market analyst at Zhuochuang Information, said that the rate of reduction in China’s breeding sow population accelerated starting in the third quarter. Affected by losses in hog farming and piglet sales, sow farms accelerated the culling and sale of sows in the third quarter. At the end of 9 month, the number of breeding sows kept by Zhuochuang Information’s 196 sample companies was 841.23 ten thousand head, down 1.13% month on month and 7.18% year on year.
“After several rounds of cyclical changes, the potential for cost reduction in traditional areas such as feed formulation, barn management, and automated farming has already been largely exhausted. Against the backdrop of industrialized farming, companies must prioritize quality. In the short term, there is little room for further substantial cost reductions, and cost-cutting alone is unlikely to become a major source of profit growth,” Zhu Zengyong said. Given that market consumer demand is approaching saturation, the previous approach of relying on consumption growth to absorb excess capacity is no longer effective. From a long-term perspective, the core operating strategy for farming companies remains controlling capacity and promoting a balance between supply and demand in a planned manner.
Uncovering value across the entire chain through collaboration
In response to changing demand and supply-side challenges, the industry’s answer lies in “restructuring value across the entire chain.”
“The total demand for pork in the market is uncertain, but demand for higher quality is certain. Our business strategy is not to predict or bet on the cycle, but to focus on the two things that are certain: quality demand and cost control.” In an interview with a Securities Times reporter, an executive at Muyuan Foods said that high quality is defined by safety as its foundation, while meeting consumers’ needs for taste, ease of cooking, convenience of purchase, and not having to spend too much time choosing. The company’s future focus will not only be on providing pork consumers can trust, but also on offering more high-quality services and expanding its business from “selling live pigs” to “selling high-quality meat products.”
Wang Chuduan also noted that the hog industry continues to face an environment of oversupply, forcing the sector to raise product standards and upgrade. Leading companies have an advantage because they can close the loop across the entire industry chain. Turning live hogs into standardized fresh meat cuts and prepared meat products, and building brand recognition directly with consumers, is equivalent to adding a new profit stream from consumer products to the existing revenue from hog trading. It can also, to some extent, smooth out earnings fluctuations caused by sharp swings in hog prices.
However, analysts generally believe that although high-quality, finely processed pork can command a considerable premium, livestock companies cannot build out their downstream systems overnight. Brand building, channel development, and investment in processing lines all require ongoing capital investment, while demand for high-end products accounts for a relatively small share of total pork consumption.
“In the future, hog companies will need not only to raise their animals well at the source, but also to turn quality through processing into an experience that consumers can perceive and want to buy again,” said Zhan Wei, founder of Sangu and CEO of Aizhu.com. Companies that produce pork have long operated with a production-oriented mindset, which does not yet reach consumer needs; they cannot build differentiated, branded pork products from the consumer’s perspective. Brand-focused companies, meanwhile, understand what consumers want but lack a production-oriented understanding of hog farming and pork production. Companies that bridge the two with an integrated industry chain inevitably face major challenges in operating-chain efficiency and asset efficiency. Many pork products still compete on low prices with little differentiation, and building pork brands and developing hit meat products remain core challenges.
Zhan Wei believes that, for hog companies, integrating farming, processing, and food service is a basic prerequisite for ensuring pork quality and safety and improving efficiency. On this basis, companies can develop new consumption scenarios, with feedback from the end market flowing back to breeding and feeding to create a closed loop in which production is driven by demand. This is a viable path for the industry to move beyond cutthroat low-price competition and secure stable brand premiums.