China's tech firms scramble to roll out face and voice recognition for pigs

As a devastating disease afflicts the country's swine, companies are scrambling to roll out facial and voice recognition and other unproven ways to save them

A database of every pig’s face. Voice scans that detect hogs with a cough. Robots that dispense just the right amount of feed. This could be China’s pig farm of the future.

Chinese companies are pushing facial and voice recognition and other advanced technologies as ways to protect the country’s pigs. In this Year of the Pig, many Chinese hogs are dying from a deadly swine disease, threatening the country’s supply of pork, a staple of Chinese dinner tables.

So China’s ebullient technology sector is applying the same techniques it has used to transform Chinese life — and, more darkly, that the