From 1 January 2014, Decree No. 643 imposed binding obligations on scaled livestock and poultry farms across China. Local governments at or above county level were required to designate forbidden areas — including drinking water source protection zones and other sensitive areas — within which new or expanded scaled farms were prohibited. Studies and policy analyses document that, following implementation, local governments issued closure, relocation, or suspension orders to scaled farms in designated forbidden areas, and required farms outside forbidden areas to construct compliant waste-treatment infrastructure. Investment in manure storage, biogas digesters, and wastewater treatment facilities increased at large-scale farms to satisfy regulatory requirements and to access biogas electricity tariff incentives linked to compliance. National and provincial programmes allocated substantial funds — including multi-billion-RMB manure utilisation action plans covering 586 designated major livestock production counties — under the regulatory framework. Empirical studies document reductions in pig inventory and farm numbers in environmentally sensitive regions and spatial consolidation of production into larger compliant facilities in less-restricted areas. Subsequent State Council and ministry-level documents, including opinions on animal manure utilisation and green agricultural development, built on and reinforced Decree No. 643 as the foundational regulatory framework for livestock pollution control. No repeal or suspension of the regulation has been documented in sources through the mid-2020s.

Anticipated Effects

If forbidden area designations continue to be enforced and extended, scaled livestock and poultry farms in drinking water source protection zones and other sensitive areas would remain excluded from those zones, sustaining the geographic reconfiguration of intensive animal production documented in implementation analyses.

If mandatory waste-treatment infrastructure requirements are consistently applied to new farm construction and expanded facilities, the proportion of large-scale farms with compliant manure storage, biogas treatment, and wastewater systems would be expected to increase over time, reducing untreated discharge per unit of production from regulated farms.

If regulatory compliance costs in combination with the forbidden-area siting restrictions lead additional scaled farms to close or restructure rather than invest in required infrastructure, further spatial concentration of intensive livestock production into compliant zones and larger operations would be expected, though the net effect on national animal numbers is not established in sources consulted.

Significance Rationale

Assigned Mixed Impact (impact direction) because documented implementation produced closures and relocations of scaled farms in designated forbidden areas — contracting intensive livestock production in environmentally sensitive zones — while production was simultaneously consolidated or expanded in compliant facilities and other regions. National livestock production continued at comparable or growing scale in many years following the regulation; the directional effect is contraction in specific geographic zones alongside persistence or reconfiguration of intensity elsewhere. This is analytically distinct from the April 2015 Water Ten Plan record, which operationalised closure mandates using this regulation’s forbidden-area framework with a 2017 deadline.

Assigned Modifies Conditions (impact type) because the primary mechanism is the establishment of new operational requirements across all scaled farms — siting restrictions, facility design mandates, manure treatment infrastructure, EIA obligations, discharge standards, and carcass disposal requirements — that change the conditions under which intensive farms must operate. Alters Legal Basis is a secondary mechanism: the forbidden area designations, EIA approval requirements, and penalty structures change what is legally permissible for new farm construction and existing farm operation.

Assigned High significance because the regulation applies nationwide to all scaled livestock and poultry farms across China’s entire intensive animal agriculture sector — the world’s largest — covering pigs, poultry, cattle, and other species through a binding State Council administrative regulation. Documented closures and relocations across multiple provinces, large-scale manure treatment infrastructure investment programmes, and integration of the regulation into subsequent State Council environmental and agricultural policy frameworks confirm material changes in system behaviour at national scale.

The duration and persistence of the scale change in intensive livestock farming in designated forbidden areas and environmentally sensitive zones is not established in available sources; comprehensive national time-series data isolating this regulation’s effects from other policies and market factors have not been identified in sources consulted.