EU pig market crisis: FEFAC President calls on EU Farm Council to take urgent measures to prevent market collapse

FEFAC President Patrick Vanden Avenne called on the EU Farm Council Presidency to take urgent measures at the upcoming Farm Council meeting on 24 January 2011 to prevent the collapse of the EU pig market.
He stated that “the current market situation of the EU livestock sector is extremely worrying. In particular the EU pig sector is facing a near market collapse. A key reason for this situation lays in particular in the rising cost for feed grains, which have recently reached the levels of 2007/2008, resulting from global demand outpacing supplies of feed grains. The current market crisis has been further exacerbated by the knock-on effects of the dioxin incident in Germany leading to a drastic fall in domestic consumption and temporary closure of some important export markets for German pigmeat. In the meantime, however, market experts anticipate that the present tension on the EU and global cereals markets may grow further before the end of the marketing year due to rising global competition for scarce feed grain supplies”.
FEFAC therefore urged the EU Farm Council to ease the market access to the supply of competitive feed grains on the EU market by suspending the import duties for all cereals as in 2007, in the light of the exceptional market situation.
FEFAC also fully supports the request of COPA-COGECA to open the private storage mechanism for pigmeat in order to facilitate the short-term stabilization of the EU pig market.