For about two decades, a meat plant in the northwest German town of Vorden has helped produce a bear-shaped cold cut known as Barchenwurst, beloved by children across the country.
However, rising production costs and waning demand for pork — even in a nation that once had some of the highest per capita consumption rates — forced the factory’s operator to declare a few weeks ago that it would shut down.
The announcement reflects the embattled state of Germany’s pork industry, which is struggling with a huge drop-off in demand, the aftermath of African swine fever, and a raft of economic challenges and domestic animal welfare provisions that have made it especially difficult to raise pigs.
Photo: REUTERS
As consumers go, so does industry. While the average German ate about 40kg of pork per year in 2007, that dropped to 29kg last year — even as beef and chicken consumption remained more or less steady.
The country’s pig population shrank by nearly one-fifth in the two years leading up to November last year, as did the number of pig farms. The Family Butchers, which owns the Vorden plant and is Germany’s second-largest sausage maker, is only the latest to end up under the knife.
German Butchers Association vice president Eckhart Neun, who is a butcher from northeast of Frankfurt, said that soaring energy, fertilizer and feed prices are putting pressure on smaller businesses like his.
“It’s like dominoes, one thing leads to another,” Neun said.
EU pork consumption is expected to drop to the lowest level in more than two decades this year and within two years production would shrink by about one-tenth.
Producers in the US are also grappling with shrinking profits, waning demand, rising costs and more regulation. Even in China, which accounts for more than half of the world’s pork consumption, the meat is falling out of favor with a rising middle class that views beef as a healthier option, McKinsey researchers said.
However, in Germany, pork producers are weathering a perfect storm of tough economic trends, broader demographic and cultural shifts, and the aftermath of public health crises that decimated production and demand.
Germans are generally choosing less meat-intensive diets, said Frank Greshake, a market expert at the North Rhine-Westphalia Chamber of Agriculture, the federal state with the highest number of pig farms.
The number of people in Germany identifying as vegetarian has grown since 2020, and a nutrition report published by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture last year said that 44 percent say they follow a “flexitarian” diet that limits meat consumption.
Health concerns are one reason for the shift: The WHO has warned that eating processed meats like sausages and ham can be carcinogenic. Environmental concerns are another. The ecological costs of raising and eating meat have been a focus of Germany’s Alliance 90/The Greens party, which joined the ruling coalition in 2021.
Muslims, many of whom do not eat pork for religious reasons, are estimated to make up nearly 7 percent of Germany’s population.
However, it is not only people who shun pork out of principle that are weighing on demand — food preferences appear to be changing along generational lines. Younger Germans favor pizza, doner kebabs and burgers over sausages, a YouGov survey conducted in December last year showed.
With fewer people seeking out schnitzel, it is difficult for meat producers to pass these higher costs along to consumers. With many farmers nearing retirement age and struggling to find successors, plenty do not see the point.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) removed former minister of foreign affairs Qin Gang (秦剛) from his post after an investigation concluded that he had conducted an affair and fathered a child while serving as ambassador to the US, the Wall Street Journal reported. Top officials were told in August that a CCP inquiry into Qin uncovered “lifestyle issues,” the newspaper reported yesterday, citing people familiar with the situation that it did not describe. That phrase usually means sexual misbehavior of some type in the parlance of Chinese officialdom. Two of the people said the affair led to the birth of a child in
GUNNED DOWN: The Canadian PM said there were credible allegations that India was connected to the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey on June 18 India yesterday dismissed allegations that its government was linked to the killing of a Sikh activist in Canada as “absurd,” expelling a senior Canadian diplomat and accusing Canada of interfering in India’s internal affairs. It came a day after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described what he called credible allegations that India was connected to the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, an advocate of Sikh independence from India who was gunned down on June 18 outside a Sikh cultural center in Surrey, British Columbia, and Canada expelled a top Indian diplomat. “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a
LOST BATTLE: The Varroa mite, which Canberra has called the ‘most serious pest’ to face bees, would cause serious economic damage, an ecologist said Australia yesterday abandoned its fight to eradicate the destructive Varroa mite, an invasive parasite responsible for the collapse of honeybee populations across the planet. Desperate to keep Varroa out of the country, authorities have destroyed more than 14,000 infected beehives since the tiny red-brown pest was first detected north of Sydney in June last year. The government said its US$64 million eradication plan could not stop the mite from spreading, and the country’s beekeepers should now prepare to live with the incursion. “The recent spike in new detections have made it clear that the Varroa mite infestation is more widespread and has
COP28 AGENDA: Beijing’s climate envoy said that China was open to negotiating a global renewable energy target as long as it took economic conditions into account The complete phasing-out of fossil fuels is not realistic, China’s top climate official said on Thursday, adding that such fuels must continue to play a vital role in maintaining global energy security. Chinese Special Envoy on Climate Change Xie Zhenhua (解振華) was responding to comments by ambassadors at a forum in Beijing ahead of the UN’s COP28 climate meeting in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in November. Reporters obtained a copy of text of Xie’s speech and a video recording of the meeting. Countries are under pressure to make more ambitious climate pledges after a UN-led global “stocktake” said that 20 gigatonnes of additional
RSS