BEIJING, April 16 (Reuters) - China's pork output for January-March fell, the first decline for a first quarter in five years as farmers slaughtered fewer pigs to support a recovery in hog prices.
Pork production is normally high during the first quarter due to a surge in slaughtering for China's Lunar New Year holidays around February, but meat sales this peak season were sluggish due to a slowdown in the economy.
Pork output eased 0.4% from a year ago to 15.83 million tonnes with China slaughtering 194.55 million hogs, a decline of 2.2%, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Tuesday.
Farmers in China had ramped up slaughter late last year to cut losses amid an outbreak of African swine fever and due to excessive supply in the market that led to plummeting prices.
China, which consumes about half of the world's pork, has encouraged pig enterprises to reduce hog capacity after an aggressive expansion led to a multi-year slump in hog prices.
It has also lowered the national target for normal retention of breeding sows to 39 million from 41 million this year.
The supply of hogs in China is, however, still expected to exceed demand due to high numbers of productive sows and a reluctance by companies to destock after making large investments.
China's pig herd size at the end of March was down 5.2% to 408.5 million heads, the data showed.
(Reporting by Mei Mei Chu; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Edwina Gibbs)
