As a result the shout price table remains as follows:

156p Woodhead
153p Tulip
153p Gill
151p Karro
151p Cranswick

Last week's shout price falls have yet to feed through to the DAPP which only lost 0.38p and currently stands at 157.3p, ahead of all comparable shout prices.

Spot bacon was generally traded at around then 150p–152p mark and although there were reports of slightly better demand in the fresh meat sector due to the horse meat scandal with consumers returning to butchers shops rather than buying meat from supermarkets this did not have much of an effect upon overall levels of trade, because basically similar types of meat were being bought from different retail outlets.

The horse meat situation has however lifted poultry meat sales quite significantly as it is quite hard to disguise a horse as a chicken and it is good that AHDB and NFU have decided to place half page adverts in all of the national newspapers promoting the Red Tractor and asking producers to buy to British (but not British horses).

The euro had a much better week than seven days ago moving up from 84.6p to 86.0p which combined with reports of stronger pig meat prices and dwindling stocks in Germany saw cull sows put on another 3p–4p this week, which is a remarkable improvement bearing in the mind that sows were trading at not much more than 93p/kg in the middle of January. Cull sow abattoirs were quoting around 106p/kg for deliveries next week.

The weaner market has yet to react to slight reductions in feed prices as well as a better outlook for finished pig returns in the months ahead and the AHDB 30kg ex-farm weaner average remains pegged at 346.35/head, but some spot trades are being reported 32- 34/head of this with significant premiums also available for Freedom Food standard weaners.

Although as reported above feed wheat prices have eased over the last week or so with delivered wheat quoted at 3197.80/t in the middle of the week, since then prices have rallied and improved on Friday by over 33/t with March quoted at 3204/t on the LIFFE futures market and 3204/t for July.

Some forward thinking producers are looking at taking cover towards the end of 2013 which is currently available at around 3186/t.

And finally... reports are being received that some supermarkets have a special promotion for all burgers and petrol starting on Monday. The deal is called "only fuel and horses".