World meat industry news

About one million pigs had to be culled on commercial farms in Russia where African swine fever (ASF) had been detected for a period of over a year. The General Director of the National Pig Union Yuri Kovalev announced it at the 13th International workshop on Pig Production-2021.

 The head of the union noted that the ASF situations had worsened on large commercial farms since November 2020, prompting pig producers to slaughter at least a million pigs to control the virus. “Compared to the last 10 years we only slaughtered 2 million pigs”, added Yuri Kovalev.

He emphasized that in the future, due to massive culls pig producers may be going into a pork deficit estimated at 300,000 tons of meat.

The decline of pork production volumes in Russia has been mostly caused by outbreaks of epizootic diseases.

Over the nine months (from January to September 2021), the increase in pork production was only 0.5% compared to the same period in 2020. This is the lowest growth rate in pork production over the past five years, the union stated.

Yuri Kovalev stressed that compared to September 2020, pork production fell 7% in September 2021. A drop in production volumes was also due to decrease in the weight of commercial pigs as a result of abnormal heat wave which lasted for more than two months in the central regions of Russia.

However, Yuri Kovalev said that by the end of 2021, thanks to new projects pork production is expected to increase and will equal around 250,000 tons. This will allow the pig sector to end the year with positive figures.