KUCHING, Feb 15 — As pig farming faces mounting pressure from disease, land competition, and royal decrees in Peninsular Malaysia, the East Malaysian state of Sarawak is rapidly cementing its position as the country's pork-producing hub, with a booming export business to Singapore.
Sarawak is currently the only state in Malaysia licensed to export live pigs to the republic. In 2024 alone, one farm, Green Breeder, shipped over 121,000 live pigs to Singapore, accounting for 8.2 per cent of the city-state's total pork imports.
The state now has ambitious plans to more than double its annual pig production from 350,000 in 2025 to 860,000 by 2030, targeting RM1 billion in exports, The Straits Times reported.
“We treasure pigs the most. So it’s easy for us to encourage people to make a living from them,” Sarawak’s Minister for Food Industry, Datuk Seri Stephen Rundi Utom, told The Straits Times, highlighting the deep cultural significance of pork among the state's non-Muslim majority, which includes indigenous and ethnic Chinese communities.
Sarawak's rise comes as the industry in Peninsular Malaysia faces an existential crisis.
In Selangor, once a major producer, the state government has announced it will stop issuing pig-farming licenses and aims to close all existing farms, following a directive from the Sultan to address environmental pollution.
Similar opposition, citing odour and water pollution, has emerged in Penang and Perak.
Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food Security Datuk Chan Foong Hin noted that this growing opposition is partly due to competition for land use on the highly developed West Coast.
The trade in live pigs between Malaysia and Singapore was halted in 1999 following the devastating Nipah virus outbreak. Singapore only resumed live pig imports in 2017, and exclusively from Sarawak, which has since proven its resilience.
Rundi said the state successfully contained an African Swine Fever (ASF) outbreak in 2022 and has adopted modern, high-tech farming methods learned from Denmark, China, and Japan.
Green Breeder, the state's anchor farm, operates a high-biosecurity, closed-house system. Visitors are quarantined, vehicles are disinfected, and workers must shower and change into scrub suits.
Co-founder Veronica Chew noted that the farm's modern methods also eliminate the strong odours typically associated with pig farming.
With its industry in the peninsula shrinking, Malaysia as a whole has become more reliant on imports, with one-third of the country's pork supply now sourced from overseas. Sarawak's export-driven model stands in stark contrast, positioning it as a key player in regional food security.
