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The pigs to be used in pork supplied for the Beijing Olympics are doing two hours of outdoor exercise every day in their secret homes and eating food with no hormones or additives, the Beijing Times said.
The Olympic pork are for sale in supermarkets such as Wal-Mart. The organic pork products cost 30 yuan (US$3.95) per jin (0.5 kilograms) with a limited daily supply of about 6,000 kilograms.
Pigs are now living in about 10 selected gardens scattered around China, and their location cannot be revealed, said Liu Yanyun, board chairman with the Qianxihe Food Group, the exclusive supplier of fresh port and pork products for the games.
The bases are in environmentally friendly areas far away from traffic lines and factories, such as China's very northeast Heilongjiang Province, to ensure there is no pollution in the air or water they intake, he said.
Cameras are monitoring the pigs around the clock and the farms are off limits to strangers, Liu said.
All of the farms have only one entry and are surrounded by high walls, with guards on duty 24 hours a day.
The total supply from these bases equals five times the expected demand during the Olympics, while the International Olympic Committee usually requires two to three times demand to ensure an adequate supply.
They are fed with organic food and are injected with vaccines made from herbal medicine to ensure no hormones or additive are involved.
"Consequently, their growing period will be two to three months longer than pigs eating ordinary animal feeds," Yang said.
Qianxihe began to supply its meat to Beijing supermarkets such as Wal-Mart on Tuesday.
The group, in a project to supply six million pigs annually for Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, has invested 500 million yuan (US$65.88 million) to build a farm in Chengde City of Hebei Province.
The farm is expected to breed one million pigs annually, accounting for 15 percent of demand in Beijing.
credit-asianpopcorn
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