HAMBURG (Reuters) – German pig prices were unchanged in the past week on increasing hopes that the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in the country has been contained, meat traders and industry groups said on Wednesday.
Livestock and meat production association VEZG said German slaughterhouse pig prices were unchanged at 1.72 euros a kilo.
Prices were down moderately from around 1.82 euros a kilo before the foot-and-mouth case was confirmed.
Germany announced the country’s first outbreak of the disease in nearly 40 years on Jan. 10 in a herd of water buffalo near Berlin. But with the outbreak remaining at one case, with no others reported since, some emergency measures to restrict the disease have been lifted.
“The market is starting to dare to hope that no more outbreaks will occur and that meat exports inside the EU will continue,” one German meat trader said.
The lack of new German cases is “certainly a welcome development”, Rabobank’s senior analyst animal protein Eva Gocsik said in a note.
“If no further outbreaks occur, Germany may retain its FMD-free status after three months,” Gocsik said. “However, the duration of trade restrictions remains uncertain and will also depend on risk assessments of third countries.”
“They may choose to lift restrictions earlier and apply the regionalisation principle, allowing import from unaffected areas.”
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said Germany’s efforts to contain the disease enable the regionalisation principle to be used.
Under this, sales of meat and dairy products are restricted from the region where the disease has been confirmed and produce from elsewhere in the affected country can still be sold inside the EU.
Measures to contain the disease, which poses no danger to humans, often involve bans on imports of meat and dairy products from affected countries, with a British import ban painful to Germany’s meat industry.
(Reporting by Michael Hogan; Editing by Jan Harvey)
