With more than 150 Chinese and foreign reporters watching from behind glass windows in a north Beijing suburb, workers decked out in blue robes and white rubber boots from Pengcheng Food Branch of Beijing Shunxin Agriculture Co. Ltd demonstrated the fine art of shaving and washing pig carcasses hung along an assembly line in a closed workshop.

"A pig has to go through 18 procedures before becoming packed pork to be sent to supermarkets," said Yang Wenke, general manager of Pengcheng, which provides more than 40 percent of Beijing's pork.

The abattoir, which kills 8,000 to 10,000 pigs daily, has 24 quarantine workers working each shift to ensure all its products are healthy and safe.

Each day, three percent of the animals slaughtered are sampled for drug residue and no big problems have been found in the past five years, Yang added.

The company has 186 farms around the country to raise pigs and even owns its feed plants so that it can control quality from the start.