While some of the countries report on prices to be steady, press releases about the H1N1 flu – dubbed as “swine flu” by mistake - created a furore, thus causing pressure to be exerted on the pig prices in other countries. Unchanged quotations were observed in Spain, Denmark and France. Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria on the other hand, reported 4 cents’ price decreases.

The German slaughter companies in particular play on the general feeling of uncertainty, increasing massively the pressure they exert on the producers. As a consequence, the corrected quotation in France has a little lead over that in Germany and the Netherlands. Great Britain remains the market leader, Spain still ranks second with the price level having remained unchanged for 8 weeks so far. Pork is still possible to be exported from the EU, stabilising the overall market situation. However, Russia farther restricted pork imports of late. Apart from further US federal states, some Canadian provinces and Spain as well are concerned by that now. Surplus quantities are not being reported on, which might have resulted from missing days of slaughter last week (1 May and Dutch “Koniginnedag”).

Trend: The quantities of live pigs on offer, which can be marketed completely, are expected to remain steady this week. The weather conditions being fitting, the consumers will buy more barbeque pork and thus stimulate demand.

Explanation
¹corrected quotation: The official Quotations of the different countries are corrected, so that each quotation has the same base (conditions).
base: 56 per cent lean-meat-percentage; farm-gate-price; 79 per cent killing-out-percentage, without value-added-tax (VAT)