CHANGSHA - China will begin exporting chilled pork to Singapore for the first time, officials and an exporter in Hunan province in central China said.

The expansion of bilateral food trade comes more than a year after Singapore resumed importing frozen pork from China, following years of import bans imposed in 2018 due to the global African swine fever epidemic.

Peng Huifeng, deputy general manager of Hunan Huale Foodstuff Co., Ltd, a pork producer in Hanshou County in the city of Changde, told Xinhua that the first shipments are expected to arrive in Singapore in a little over a month.

This follows cooperation agreements reached on Dec 15 at the annual meeting of the China-Singapore Joint Council for Bilateral Cooperation held in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality.

Under the food trade agreement, Chongqing and the provinces of Heilongjiang and Hunan will export pork and some processed pork products to Singapore.

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While Chongqing and Heilongjiang supply processed cooked pork, Hunan is currently the only Chinese province approved to export chilled pork, frozen pork and processed pork products to Singapore, said Wu Shenshu, an official with the Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of Hunan province.

The shipments will mark Singapore's first imports of chilled pork from China, with Huale Foodstuff being the only Chinese company registered to export both raw and cooked pork to Singapore, according to Wu.

Singapore does not raise pigs domestically and consumes about 70,000 tonnes of chilled pork each year, Wu said. The official added that Hunan aims to capture about half of that market within two years, which would be equivalent to more than 100 tonnes per day.

The department will work with Changsha Customs and other agencies to support the exporter in strengthening biosecurity controls throughout the supply chain to ensure food safety, Wu said.

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Huale Foodstuff's businesses cover hog breeding, slaughtering and processing, with an annual production of about 120,000 hogs, said Xiao Min, head of the Hanshou county department of agriculture and rural affairs.

Hunan New Wellful Co., Ltd., a pork producer with over six decades of experience in supplying hogs to Hong Kong, can provide Huale Foodstuff with an additional 200,000 hogs a year and offer technical support on medication use and disease prevention, Xiao said.