On 4 September 2026, China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) released the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Livestock and Veterinary Industry Development. The plan aims to shift China’s livestock sector from expansion toward stable supply, higher productivity, better quality, stronger animal-health security, and greener production. By 2030, China intends to secure supplies of major livestock products while raising farm scale, domestic breeding capability, manure utilization, and veterinary capacity. It also aims to strengthen disease prevention and lower veterinary antimicrobial use per unit of output. By 2035, the aim is to largely complete the modernization of the livestock sector.
Main livestock and veterinary development indicators
Indicator | 2025 | 2030 target |
Total meat production | >95 million tons | >95 million tons |
Egg production | 34.98 million tons | 35.5 million tons |
Milk and milk product production | 41.69 million tons | 43 million tons |
Total industrial feed production | 340 million tons | 350 million tons |
Total forage production | 100 million tons | 130 million tons |
Share of livestock and poultry production under scaled-up farming | 76.9% | 82% |
Domestic breeding-stock and genetic-source market share | 80% | 85% |
Contribution rate of scientific and technological progress to livestock production | 70% | 73% |
Comprehensive utilization rate of livestock and poultry manure | 80% | 85% |
Pass rate in livestock-product sampling inspections | 99% | ≥99% |
Number of newly registered veterinary drug products | 132 | 145* |
Number of disease-purified farms, disease-free compartments, and disease-free zones | 812 | 1,110 |
Reporting rate upon arrival for livestock and poultry transported across provinces | 83% | 95% |
Number of licensed practicing veterinarians | 207,000 | 250,000 |
Share of pig slaughterhouses above designated scale | 45% | 50% |
*For Indicator 11, 145 is the targeted average annual number of registrations during the plan period, not a year-end figure.
The plan does not seek major growth in total meat output, which stays above 95 million tons in both 2025 and 2030; this may reflect stagnating consumption given China’s projected population decline. The stronger increases are in forage supply, production scale, domestic genetics, and animal-health capacity: forage production is to rise from 100 million to 130 million tons, and the domestic breeding-source market share from 80% to 85%.
Key goals and policy direction
The overarching objective is summarized as “stabilizing production, improving quality and raising efficiency” while balancing production capacity, ecology, farm income, and sector security. By 2030, large-scale and facility-based farming should expand, animal diseases should be better controlled, zoonotic risks and antimicrobial use should decline, and manure recycling should increase.
The plan also supports breeding self-reliance. China will continue its national livestock genetic-improvement programs, strengthen core breeding farms, promote genomic selection, and accelerate the commercialization of domestically developed breeds.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and smart livestock farming receive explicit attention. The government wants wider adoption of precision feeding, intelligent environmental control, sensing, automated identification, and health inspection, as well as large livestock datasets, breeding AI agents, smart epidemic prevention, and industrial robots.
Pork
The plan calls for a permanent, precise pig-production-capacity regulation mechanism rather than intervention only during major market swings. Farm production data will be centrally registered and coded, and monitoring will cover the “company + farmer” model as well as pig slaughter, sales, and inventories. Authorities will also monitor breeding-sow productivity and pork consumption, and the national breeding-sow inventory target will be adjusted dynamically in line with supply and demand.
Regulation will be differentiated: companies with at least 100,000 breeding sows fall under ministry-level regulation, and farms with at least 500 breeding sows under provincial regulation. Provinces are encouraged to set reference ranges for pre-slaughter weights and to regulate “secondary fattening.” China thus intends to manage not only sow numbers but also the volume and timing of pork entering the market. The government will also introduce annual production filing, regulate multi-story pig farming, and strengthen financial and environmental-risk monitoring.
On slaughtering, the share of pig slaughterhouses above designated scale is to rise from 45% to 50% by 2030. The plan calls for quality-management standards; upgraded facilities; elimination of obsolete capacity; electronic meat-inspection certificates; and tighter enforcement against illegal slaughter, water or drug injection, and slaughter of diseased or dead animals.
Biosecurity and animal disease control
Although the document uses the language of animal disease prevention, quarantine, veterinary public health, and disease purification, its measures amount to a substantial biosecurity agenda. A major priority is normalized and precise control of African swine fever (ASF). The plan further requires compulsory vaccination against designated major animal diseases; stronger source control of zoonoses such as brucellosis, anthrax, and rabies; emergency stocks for exotic diseases; national surveillance and epidemiological investigation; and improved emergency response.
For pigs, breeding farms will focus on eliminating vertically transmitted diseases, including pseudorabies and porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS), while national core breeding farms and boar stations advance eradication of classical swine fever. Disease-free compartments will also be promoted for ASF, highly pathogenic avian influenza, foot-and-mouth disease, and other major diseases. More than 80% of national core pig breeding farms and boar stations should pass evaluation as disease-purified farms or disease-free compartments; the corresponding targets are above 70% for core cattle and sheep facilities and above 75% for core poultry facilities.
Movement controls are also being strengthened. The cross-provincial livestock-arrival reporting rate is to rise from 83% to 95% by 2030. Online quarantine applications, electronic certificates, and digital management of animal transportation are to become standard, letting authorities analyze movement data and issue risk warnings. The plan also calls for standardized, digitized veterinary laboratories and 250,000 practicing veterinarians by 2030, up from approximately 207,000.
Veterinary drugs, food safety, and antimicrobial reduction
The plan calls for faster development and registration of innovative feed products, veterinary medicines, and antibiotic alternatives. It requires continued reduction of veterinary antimicrobial use, stricter supervision of feed and veterinary-drug production, and enforcement against prohibited substances such as clenbuterol-type “lean-meat powder.” The target is to keep the pass rate in livestock-product sampling inspections at 99% or above through 2030.
Feed security and implications for soybean demand
Another strategically important provision is the continued reduction and substitution of soybean meal in animal feed. China intends to promote precision-formulated, low-protein diets, digital feed formulation, greater use of amino acids and enzymes, alternative protein sources, and fermented feed. The document does not say this is meant to reduce soybean imports, but lower inclusion rates would reduce the volume of imported soybeans needed for feeding.
Trade
International trade receives much less attention than domestic production and biosecurity. The clearest reference comes under policy coordination, where the government calls for stronger alignment among industrial policy, environmental regulation, production-capacity regulation, and trade policy. The trade implications are therefore mostly indirect but significant: tighter pig-capacity regulation should stabilize domestic supply; a greater domestic breeding-source market share should reduce dependence on imported genetics; and soybean-meal substitution could reduce feed-import exposure.
Implications
China’s livestock policy for 2026–2030 will focus less on maximizing production and more on controlling cycles, improving productivity, strengthening biosecurity, building domestic technological and genetic capacity, and modernizing slaughter and veterinary systems. For pork, production capacity will be more actively managed and digitally monitored, while ASF control, breeding-farm disease purification, movement surveillance, and slaughter consolidation become institutionalized. Domestic breeding and soybean-meal substitution point to a continued focus on supply-chain resilience, though no import-reduction targets are set.
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