At October's meeting of the Agriculture Council, French Agriculture Minister, Bruno Le Maire, highlighted the need for immediate EU action to resolve the difficulties currently experienced by the European pig meat sector as feed prices are rising at the same time as pig meat prices are falling.

The Commission was made well aware of the challenges facing the livestock sector as shown by the recent Commission decision to release cereals from intervention storage to the market to keep feed ingredient prices down and help livestock farmers. Agriculture Commissioner, Mr Ciolos has stated his determination to tackle speculation in the cereal markets and his desire to include anew mechanism to counteract income volatility in the forthcoming reform of the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP).

Furthermore, the Belgian presidency of the EU is also keen to discuss the EU pig meat market situation before its tenure of the office comes to an end. Consequently, Member State representatives were invited to participate in a 'Refection Day' in Brussels today at a meeting entitled 'The pig meat sector towards 2020'.

Belgium aimed to bring together experts across the pig sector form all Member States to explore good practices in this area with a view to extending these at EU level with a long-term perspective.

It was hoped that Commissioner Ciolos would attend, as well as members of Defra and National Pig Association to represent the UK.