The markdowns range from a corrected minus 5 cents in Belgium to minus 1 cent in France. As a result of the slight price decrease in France, the German quotation ranks fifth again within the European price structure of the five major pig-keeping nations.

The missing day of slaughter, packed cold storages, the weak meat business and a lack of impulse from exports creates quite a difficult situation for the European countries.

In France, the slaughter weights are going down severely, reaching this year’s lowest value at 91.6 kg. The French are quite worried when looking at this new week of slaughter, comprising two days off as public holidays.

Spain keeps leading the list of the major pig-keeping countries. But the desperate economic situation in Spain deposits in low domestic spending capacity.

Changes in export towards Russia are hanging in the air, in the context of a list reworked by the Russian veterinary authority related to enterprises approved for export. Unchanged prices are reported from Great Britain.

Trend for the German market: Even with 1 May as a missing day of slaughter, not enough backlog supply has piled up to cause trouble in Germany. Because they fear a decline in prices, producers already cleared their stables swiftly. The meat business has been triggered by increased demand for barbecue meat resulting from the pleasant weather last weekend. Further prospects are promising, so prices are expected to remain steady.

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; farm-gate-price; 79 per cent killing out percentage, without value-added-tax (VAT)