cover image: Rethinking Self-Sufficiency: Lessons from Singapore’s Pig Farming Past  SYNOPSIS

20.500.12592/ppsd18

Rethinking Self-Sufficiency: Lessons from Singapore’s Pig Farming Past SYNOPSIS

2 Sep 2022

There was another more contentious dimension to this decision - the complicated relationship between the government and the local pig farming industry. [...] In addition, the Singapore Pork Merchants’ Association (SPMA), which represented a significant portion of local pork retailers and butchers, refused on numerous occasions to slaughter pigs and sell fresh pork in local markets, taking extra rest days to “avoid losses”. [...] By March 1982, the increase in pig supplies had caused prices to plunge so precipitously that local farmers publicly implored the government to halt imports, and to let them sell their surplus pigs. [...] Though Dr Goh’s 1984 explanations in Parliament to phase out pig farming never referenced these tensions between public agencies and the pork industry, the government’s earliest experiments with importing foreign pigs can be traced to these clashes between the government and the private sector. [...] The frequent supply disruptions and price hikes caused by the local pork industry had hence pushed the government to finding alternative sources of pork.

Authors

Janet Fung

Pages
4
Published in
Singapore