When Imported Meat Comes to Urumqi, What Do They Have to Say?
Foodthink Says
On 23 May, the documentary “Whose Table, Whose Pasture” was screened in Urumqi. Following the screening, audience members from local organisations, universities, the livestock sector and all walks of life in Xinjiang shared their perspectives and discussed the conditions of the region’s pastoral areas.
The film was directed by Jiao Xiaofang and Qiongwu Danzeng, and received support from the Foodthink Lianhe Creative Programme. The two directors conducted field research in pastoral areas surrounding Qinghai Lake, documenting the impact on pastoralists’ livelihoods and way of life as cattle and sheep prices continued to fall and large volumes of imported frozen meat flooded the market.
This article records the responses and reflections of audiences in Xinjiang following the screening. This year has been designated by the United Nations as the “International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists,” and “Whose Table, Whose Pasture” continues to be screened and discussed across the country. We hope that more viewers will join this dialogue about pastoral areas, pastoralists and food systems, so that more people can witness the changes unfolding in pastoral communities.
We are grateful to the Yonghe Lane Community, Jiefang South Road Subdistrict, Tianshan District, Urumqi, for providing venue support for this event.
Pastoral Livestock Farming Must Be Sustainable
“Through this documentary, I followed the camera on a traceability journey from the dining table out to the pastoral areas. It gave me a clear understanding of the differences between feed-raised and naturally grass-fed cattle and sheep, and brought into focus the difficult tension between live livestock numbers and pasture carrying capacity that pastoral areas face.” — Tian Miao, Master’s student in Ecological Social Work, School of Political Science and Public Administration, Xinjiang University
“I saw this film once in Beijing, and today is my second viewing — and this time, I am discussing it with a group of people from home. It is very different from the screening discussions I had in Beijing. Everyone shared their thoughts from different angles. I did not expect so many people from home to be paying attention to pastoral areas. It makes me feel that our organisation’s work in the pastoral regions is not something we are doing alone. In pastoral areas today, pasture degradation is the result of multiple factors — climate, social and economic. Pastoralists have their own traditional knowledge for judging a pasture’s carrying capacity, and they have long-standing traditions of protecting their grazing land.” — Xie Hongmei, Xinjiang Shanshui Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development Centre
Raising cattle and sheep combines both grass-fed and grain-fed models. When we assess the sustainable development of pastoral livestock farming, we must always take the impact of grain-feeding into account as well.
The sheep industry is a relatively niche speciality in our country. It is different from pork and chicken production. The international market is mainly beef-oriented, with less lamb, so lamb is comparatively less affected by international market forces.
Sustainable development in pastoral livestock farming is a complex issue, shaped by economic, social and environmental factors. Pasture degradation in particular can take decades or longer to recover from. Once the damage has set in, reversing it comes at an enormous cost.
Because per capita resources are limited, the cost of every input in production is rising. Compared with grain-fed livestock farming, the comparative efficiency gap is clearly visible, so it is necessary to reduce production scale, lower the grassland loading, and give the grassland time to recover.
Development should centre on local speciality, relying on the breeds native to the region. Cooking should be kept simple — just water and salt — emphasising the original flavour. This suits small-scale farmers and avoids direct competition with intensive processing.
The key to pastoral livestock farming lies in being small but refined — delivering product quality and distinctiveness, including cultural value. The cultural dimension of pastoral livestock farming is very important. It carries a closeness between people and nature that modern livestock farming simply does not have. Education on sustainable development in livestock farming is crucial, and so is the organisation of pastoralists.” — Hu Jun, Livestock Expert, Sustainable Agriculture Project
◉ Hu Jun, Livestock Expert, Sustainable Agriculture Project, speaking after the screening.
“Right now, cattle and sheep raised on the range and those being finished for market all sell at the same price. They should be priced differently, and that distinction should be clearly indicated. There are problems with management, including market management. Every county should have a live livestock trading market so that pastoralists can sell their animals at a fair price.
Hazardous weather is becoming more frequent. The light drizzle we used to get is disappearing; now it is simply drought — low air humidity and gusty winds.
In the farming areas, livestock numbers keep growing, and we cannot control hired shepherds taking animals up to the mountains. We should encourage those who keep fewer animals, so that livestock numbers can be managed reasonably. I once asked pastoralists about the pasture-livestock balance subsidy: the payments are made on the basis of pasture area, not head count, so households with more cattle and sheep actually receive more subsidy. Policy direction needs to be right, and policy needs proper research.” — Altay, Retired Official, Forestry and Grassland System
“The low price of imported beef and lamb is fundamentally driven by the cost advantages of scale and systematisation. Beyond extremely low bulk logistics and transport costs, major overseas producing regions rely on natural pastures, mechanised farming, policy subsidies and tariff advantages, keeping their overall production costs far below domestic levels. This is the key to their price advantage.
The grain-fed farming we often talk about is not merely a way to compensate for insufficient forage. It is an efficient, precision farming approach that uses grain feed to improve farming efficiency, enhance meat quality, address seasonal supply shortfalls on pastures, and adapt to the farming conditions of different regions. It is a universally applicable modernised optimisation approach for livestock farming.
The most efficient way to farm livestock has always been to use breeds suited to the local environment. Livestock breeds adapted to local conditions have higher feed conversion ratios and stronger risk resistance, minimising farming losses and achieving both cost reduction and efficiency gains.
Overall, the cost advantage of international livestock farming is a composite of advantages in resources, technology and production model. The key lesson for us is to select breeds suited to local conditions, scientifically match feeding models, and leverage technology to achieve efficient and sustainable development of the livestock industry.” — Lin Pengchubin, Head of the Chinese-language Communications Team, “International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists”
◉ Lin Pengchubin speaking.
Pastoralists’ Way Forward Amid Social Change
“Perhaps because I have only been in the workforce a few years, and I am just a wage worker myself, when I heard the pastoralist in the film say he can only herd sheep and cannot do any other kind of work, I felt deeply heartbroken. Labourers at the bottom of the hierarchy have it so hard. They have no right of entry into the market, and they have lost their human dignity.” — Audience member
“I took a sociology course at university, and after watching the film I got the feeling that pastoralists are being left behind by the times. They do not have the economic means to move to the cities and build a life there. In the process of economic development, it feels as though some people are being dropped, urban and rural development is uneven, and there are tensions between economic growth and environmental protection.” — Audience member
“I have noticed that everyone looks at the problem from a different angle. For instance, consumers tend to focus on whether the beef and lamb on the market have been treated with growth hormones, a threat to health and safety.
As a Master’s student in social work, what I see is the vulnerable group — the pastoralists. For generations their families have lived on this land, sustaining themselves through herding. Now, facing ecological destruction, the collapse of the cattle and sheep market, and a host of other problems, their already difficult lives are made even harder, and even their most basic livelihood is barely secured. This urgently calls for support in every direction for these marginalised groups: national policy advocacy and subsidies, greater attention, care and understanding from society, community-level fair trade and urban-rural cooperation, and at the individual level, technical and vocational skills training and awareness-raising, so that they might have more pathways forward.” — Rexidaimu, Master’s student in Ecological Social Work, School of Political Science and Public Administration, Xinjiang University
“What struck me most in the film — and left me a little wistful — was a middle-aged pastoralist who said he was living a ‘great failure.’ He tried working in the town, but because he had never been to school, no one treated him well. If he kept herding, he could not cover his household expenses. He must have been a hardworking provider for his family, but by the standards of mainstream values he has judged himself a failure. You can see how profoundly mainstream society shapes the individual — not just through income, but through self-confidence and the recognition of one’s own worth.
Meanwhile, with the growth of tourism, pastures and grasslands have come to be imagined as some kind of ideal place to belong for some urban people — not necessarily a reality. For pastoralists, the equation ‘migrant work = status, modernisation = status’ is equally not necessarily true. In this kind of environment, how do we help young people make their own choices more clearly? Going back to be a pastoralist, going back to school, starting a business, taking a job, or doing something else entirely — any of it should be possible.
My hometown is a small county town. A while back I brought some lamb from home to share a barbecue with friends in Urumqi, and one of them said, ‘I feel a sheep galloping in my mouth.’ That description is fascinating. I kept thinking: logically, cities should have more abundant resources, yet here we are, both Xinjiang people, and he has never eaten lamb this fresh. Is the city not supposed to be closer to the “centre” of resources? So how is it actually further from good food?
This brings us back to the film’s title, Whose Table, Whose Pasture. The distant pasture supplies the dining table. In my understanding, the countryside is the pasture and the city is the table, and the distance in between is actually vast. Supply is at one end, consumption at the other. The process that connects the two has been severed, and a great deal of truth has disappeared along with it. We cannot see where a piece of meat comes from, who raised the animal, or what was paid in cost — and so we are easily swept up by the economy, by consumerism, by advertising.
As a community builder, I hope that through public discussion in shared spaces, individuals can learn a little more about what is happening in their immediate vicinity, see a little more of the truth, and then make their choices.” — Wang Bingying, Wugui Yingzao Community Development Centre, Shuimogou District, Urumqi
◉ Discussion at the event.
“I had never heard of pastoral areas or the topic of beef and lamb before — it was all very unfamiliar to me. Today, after watching the film and listening to everyone’s sharing, I have only just begun to understand. Before, I would simply buy meat and eat it, and probably would not have thought about what lay behind it. Now I know that behind technological progress there are also questions of people’s survival.” — Audience member
“What struck me most in the film was what the pastoralist said about how there are too many things to buy now — a house, a car, and so on. There used to be far fewer places to spend money.” — Audience member
“Everyone needs to reflect on those desires that keep swelling inside us.” — Audience member
Meat, Not Just Meat
“First time watching this kind of investigative documentary. Following the director’s perspective, peeling back the layers step by step in search of answers — it looks like it is about the price of beef and lamb, but I also began to think about what we pay for the beef and lamb on our plates day to day, and the impact on the pastoral areas and related industries behind them. I was curious why imported beef and lamb is more competitive, and the post-screening discussion gave me some of the answer. I am gradually starting to reflect on our relationship with food.”— Hewang, Wugui Yingzao Community Development Centre, Shuimogou District, Urumqi
“As consumers, we do not know where meat comes from.”— Audience member
“Before, I simply took beef and lamb as part of the dining table. After watching the film, I realised it is not just a matter for the table.”— Audience member
“I am Mongolian from Hefeng, Xinjiang, and have been settled in Beijing for many years. Living in the city for so long, I have noticed that diet has a profound effect on adolescents’ growth.
When it comes to food, our family has always been particularly cautious. We insist on cooking at home, rarely eat out, and turn down delivery. The beef and lamb we eat day to day are all unprocessed local ingredients shipped regularly from our hometown, Hefeng.
Many friends and relatives have tried the beef and lamb from my hometown and fallen in love with the texture and quality. They often ask me to buy some for them. That is what gave me the idea: why not share the naturally raised, healthy, high-quality beef and lamb from Xinjiang pastures with more friends in the interior? So I decided to go back home and start a business, hoping to bring this healthy, grassland-born food to thousands of dining tables. Relying on the unique natural conditions of my hometown, I want to bring unprocessed, safe and healthy beef and lamb to the inland market, so that more people can enjoy the healthy goodness that comes from the grassland.”— Dairui, Entrepreneur Returning to Xinjiang
◉ Everyone watching Whose Table, Whose Pastoral Area together at the event.
“In the interior, when we eat meat we need a whole lot of spices — star anise, cinnamon, bay leaves, Sichuan pepper — layer upon layer, as if without all that you simply cannot mask that indefinable lamb smell. But meat in Xinjiang is a different matter. Boiled in plain water, a pinch of salt, or nothing at all. You take a bite, and what you taste is the grassland, the wind, the sunlight.
I had never heard of pastoral areas before, never thought about where cattle and sheep come from. After watching the film and hearing everyone speak, I realised that behind every piece of meat stands a pastoralist, a stretch of pasture, a difficult livelihood. Have pastoralists been left behind by the times? The grassland is degrading, modern livestock farming is sweeping in, but that closeness between people and nature, that quality where you can taste the real flavour without any spices — modern livestock farming cannot provide that.
But meat from outside is flooding in. Frozen meat from abroad, container after container arriving at ports, then flowing into supermarkets, restaurants, household fridges. Cheap, stable supply, neat packaging. Consumers do not think about where this piece of meat comes from, how it was raised, whether behind it lies a grassland in degradation, a pastoralist growing anxious. The market only needs cheaper, more convenient. And so the cattle and sheep in pastoral areas cannot find buyers, and pastoralists’ livelihoods grow harder.
We miss the lamb that needs no spices, yet reach for the cheaper frozen meat on the shelf. Desires are rising, pastures are receding, pastoralists are waiting. We all need to reflect.”— Cheng Guojingmei, first-year student, Chinese Language and Literature, School of Liberal Arts, Xinjiang University
The Grassland Is More Than a Pastoral Area: A Unique Culture and Way of Life
“When I buy beef at the supermarket, 90 yuan a kilo never gives me much pause. But after watching the documentary today — learning just how low the price pastoralists receive for their lamb, and how complex the selling process is — I felt acutely how difficult their lives are, and I could not help feeling a pang of sadness.
Another profound impression I took away concerns ecological protection: cattle and sheep are inherently part of the grassland ecosystem. If pastoralists were to give up herding because beef and lamb prices are too low, the impact on the grassland ecology could be difficult to predict. In my view, pastoralists are not merely users of the grassland — they are its guardians, the stewards of the pasture ecology. Returning to the question the documentary poses — “Whose table, whose pasture?” — my answer is: our table, our pasture.”— Xiaomai, SEE Foundation Xinjiang Ecological and Environmental Protection Project Management Committee
“During my internship, I spent some time in a pastoral area. The meat I ate at pastoralists” homes really did taste different from what you get in Urumqi. The pastoralists’ meat has no lamb smell at all — the beef carries a milky fragrance, and after eating, your fingers still smell of it. I absolutely love the beef and lamb they boil at home — no extra seasonings, just a tiny pinch of salt, and you can taste the food exactly as it is. This was the first time I had ever eaten meat like that.
The elders in the pastoral areas say that in the old days, a meal of meat, a bowl of tea, and some naan would see you through a full day’s work without a hint of tiredness. Now you eat the meat, eat the naan, and before you have done much work at all, you are hungry again — hungry much faster than before. Cattle and sheep need so many injections these days. I do not dare eat the beef and lamb sold anywhere else — I only eat what comes from my own household. What the elders are really reminding us is that times are changing, and the food we eat is changing with them. The power of food is not as simple as calories alone.”— Huang Qianqian, Master’s student in Ecological Social Work, School of Political Science and Public Administration, Xinjiang University
“We young people, for some reason, just naturally assume that foreign things are better — we buy European cosmetics, Japanese and Korean clothes…… Everything is developing so fast now, high-rise buildings everywhere. The rise of tourism areas is making the disappearance of nomadic culture even faster. In ten years, in thirty years — will nomadic culture still exist?” — Audience member
[Film Introduction]
Whose Table, Whose Pasture is a field-investigative documentary. The director went deep into the pastoral areas around Qinghai Lake, documenting the impact of large volumes of imported frozen beef and lamb entering local markets. Through visits to Xining’s frozen meat wholesale market and cold-chain warehouses, and filming local pastoralist households, butchers’ shops, and finishing farms, the film vividly shows how imported meat, with its low-price advantage, has hit local beef and lamb hard. This has directly led to a sharp drop in the buying price of pastoralists’ cattle and sheep, reduced income, difficulty repaying loans, and thin margins for local meat traders who find business increasingly hard. The camera goes deep into the imported beef and lamb market around Qinghai Lake — confronting a harsh reality: in the globalised meat supply chain, who is enjoying the low prices, and who is bearing the cost?
[Director Introduction]
Jiao Xiaofang | Documentary director and visual anthropology researcher, long focused on local knowledge, ecological ethics, and women’s experiences in western China and coastal Southeast Asia. Her work combines ethnographic observation with poetic expression, focusing on the relationship between people and nature and the emotional landscapes of everyday life. The documentary Whose Table, Whose Pasture (2025) was selected for the Fifth World Nomad Film Festival and the Sixth China Ethnographic Documentary Film Festival.
Qiongwu Tenzin | Tibetan documentarian and community activist, long dedicated to ecological protection and visual arts education in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau region. Previously served as coordinator for the Tibet programme of “Rural Eyes” in Yunnan and as regional representative for the Alxa SEE Sanjiangyuan Project Centre. Currently leads the “Human-Bear Conflict Project” at the Xuejing Ecological Education, Publicity and Research Centre in Qinghai Province. Over the past decade, he has promoted pastoralist video training and community ecology projects in Yushu, Aba, and other areas, supporting pastoralists to document their own environments and cultures through video. His work spans video, ecology, and public education, dedicated to building understanding and coexistence between people and nature.
[Pre-event Planning]
Foodthink
International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists Chinese Communication Working Group (IYRP Chinese Group)
SEE Foundation Xinjiang Ecological and Environmental Protection Project Management Committee
Shenzhen One Foundation
Xinjiang Landscape Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development Centre
Candle Rescue Team
[Venue Support]
Yonghexiang Community, Jiefang South Road Sub-district, Tianshan District, Urumqi
*Unless otherwise noted, all images are courtesy of the Xinjiang Landscape Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development Centre
*Due to limited on-site recording, not all speakers’ names and identities could be fully documented. Speakers whose names and identities have been confirmed are identified by name in this article; all others are listed simply as “audience members”.
Compiled by
Xinjiang Landscape Environmental Protection and Sustainable Development Centre
Layout: Xiaoshu
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