British sector diminishes faster than beef did in response to BSE Clean slaughterings to be halved in five years The MLC's latest pigmeat sector forecast points to persistent price volatility in this country, along with insecure market shares for some of the major suppliers, rather than the simple downtrend in values likely to afflict the rest of the EU market later this year. Diminishing tonnages of home produced bacon are already evident, and the MLC's most recent Market Outlook bulletin has been reported as warning of further erosion. However, the fall in pork production now forecast by the MLC is much more dramatic than the predicted shrinkage of bacon supply. In total the British pig industry, and in particular the supply of clean pork for the domestic market, is undergoing a calamitous contraction. The sector is diminishing more severely, and faster, than did the British beef sector in response to BSE. If the MLC forecast proves correct for 2003, clean pig slaughterings will have almost halved in five years. BSE did not have anything remotely approaching this effect. And the MLC analysts acknowledge their short-term prediction of pork production is distorted by sow culling. Some of the recent increased sow carcase availability results from the delayed slaughter of breeding stock held back on farm for extra litters due to the FMD crisis. Sow carcase weights have been boosted for the same reason. And in the second half of this year total pork production figures will probably be further flattered by abnormally high sow slaughter as breeding herds are run down deliberately, a response to margin pressures not primarily a consequence of FMD crisis. The underlying trend of herd contraction could take UK sow numbers down to about 450,000 head by midsummer, scarcely half the count a decade ago. Productivity increases cannot offer help for the industry's customers. If anything, productivity as measured by slaughter pigs finished per year per sow is likely to fall well below the rate of the early '90s due to the epidemic of wasting diseases now regarded as a more serious problem than swine fever. Yet the squeeze on home production will be tightening at a time of resilient and possibly increased supply from other EU sources, except perhaps the Dutch, driving the prices of domestic and imported pigmeat in opposite directions. {{MEAT }}

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