Germany’s largest slaughterhouses closure has knock on effect throughout Northern Europe

The factory processes 140,000 pigs per week, 15 percent of all pigs slaughtered in Germany.

Tönnies had stopped importing pigs from certain countries, as efforts to divert pigs to other processing plants in the country where proving extremely difficult with the situation looking worse than once thought. It has been suggested that there is now a surplus of 100,000 finishers in the country. Weekly slaughter hit 785,000 pigs in the penultimate week of June, 90,000 less than the week before the factory closure in Germany.

This has meant Northern Ireland (NI) producers who usually send cull sows to the processing plant for cutting are seeing backlogs develop on farms. Two weeks’ worth of cull sows are still on farms as supply chains slowly try to export pigs into the country again.

Prices are dramatically falling compared to the original value before this period of uncertainty, now in the region of 20p/kg, previously at 55-56p/kg. Although it is hoped that this problem is short lived, the unknown factor is the spread of COVID-19 throughout staff working in meat processing plants in Germany and the response to workers conditions in the country.

The incident has sparked a debate between Trade Unions and politicians about workers conditions in not only this factory but throughout Germany.

Several factories have announced fundamental changes to their businesses. Angela Merkel has claimed that the meat industry will have to change, it remains unclear how this will affect the UK market going forward and what this means for the multitude of UK pigs that are processed in the country.

The UFU pork and bacon committee continues to monitor the effects across Northern Europe as a result of the situation in Germany, as well as how local producers are managing.