Ding Lei, founder and CEO of Netease

Seven years after the founder of Netease, one of China's leading Internet and online game service providers, announced that he would raise and sell "green" pigs, the Netease pigs have finally debuted online.

On Nov. 27, three black pigs were auctioned on a Netease shopping website, each one assigned a starting price of 1 RMB. The current price for each pig has already exceeded 100,000 RMB, with bidding set to continue until Nov. 30.

Netease founder Ding Lei said that the company's pig farms will strive to become the first in China to offer a fully transparent cultivation process. In the future, Netease will webcast the pig-raising process, with the aim of reassuring consumers in a sector plagued with serious food safety problems.

At present, the price for black pig meat is 40 to 60 RMB per kilogram. At the recently-concluded Third Internet Conference, Ding revealed that 20,000 pigs raised at Netease farms will go on sale in December. Industry insiders believe this first auction is intended as a rehearsal for the forthcoming online sale of Netease pigs.