World meat industry news

Wholesale prices for meat products in Russia are actively declining, Interfax reports, citing data from the National Meat Association (NMA).

First of all, we are talking about live pigs, pork itself and broiler meat. Over the past two months, according to her monitoring, the price of the first of the goods has fallen by a quarter to 116 rubles per kilogram, the cost of the latter has decreased by the same amount - to an average of 155 rubles. As for pork itself, the decline occurred in several positions at once. In particular, carbonate, one of the most popular among middle-class Russians and especially high-income citizens, has sharply fallen in price - from 350-360 to 280-285 rubles/kg. Another type in demand not only among Russian consumers, but also among meat processors, pork ham, became 30 percent cheaper, but the price remained 14 percent higher than last year.

The organization recalled that earlier industry experts also predicted a drop in wholesale prices for products after an increase associated with growing demand. At the same time, they noted that in retail, none of these types of meat is becoming cheaper. As the head of NMA said, prices in this segment for both poultry and pork began to rise since April last year. He named several reasons: the approaching shashlik and barbecue seasons, an increase in the disposable income of the population and such a logical factor as an increase in production costs due to the rise in price of equipment and components, rising costs for logistics, transportation and other components of production. In his opinion, retail prices are unlikely to fall to the normal level observed last year in the near future. At the same time, the expert noted that even this growth is less than food inflation. He cited 2015 as an example, when it was 60 percent, but, for example, retail prices for pork have increased since then by only 20-25. According to him, the cost of beef and poultry meat is also within the limits of inflation. With all this, he also recalled that the share of this meat in the consumer basket of Russians is growing, for example, for pork - from 32 to almost 40 percent due to available protein. In general, meat consumption, according to him, has increased to 80 kilograms per person per year, with an average of 43.

Yushin also voiced several proposals to stabilize prices. Among them are the authorities maintaining good profitability of the industry, creating mutually beneficial and mutually respectful relationships between producers and retail chains without complaints, fines and other manipulations, abandoning too active imports of meat, as well as expanding the practice of long-term contracts with the parties fulfilling their obligations. He called simple regulation of prices for many goods ineffective, since “you can’t keep up with market fluctuations.” Yushin also believes that the authorities should not skimp on the biosafety of production, in particular, the development of veterinary medicine, improving the work of veterinary services and finding new qualified employees.