January 28, 2016

EU pigmeat private storage aid ends

EU member states voted Tuesday, Jan. 26, the closing of the pigmeat private storage aid scheme (PSA) open since Jan. 4, 2016.

The PSA scheme for pigmeat, operational for three weeks, has already taken a substantial amount of pigmeat off the market, with the planned volumes of products already reached, the European Commission said.

It said the total quantity of products put into storage, most of it for a period of five months, was 89,841 tonnes valued at around €27.6 million (US$30.038 million). It is higher than those included in last year's scheme (60,000 tonnes).

The member states said that if more meat would be stored, more would return to the market in a few months all at once, which risks bringing an imbalance.

Since the scheme was introduced on Jan. 4, it was noted that the decline in prices seen in the end of 2015 had been halted and that there were indications of a modest recovery in prices in the early weeks of 2016.

A total of 18 member states participated in the scheme with four of them storing three quarters of the meat: Germany 26,000 tonnes (29 %), Spain 19,000 tonnes (22 %), Denmark 12,000 tonnes (13 %) and the Netherlands 11,000 tonnes (12 %).

The scheme, which provides EU funding to help cover the costs of storing certain pigmeat products for periods of three to five months, was devised to ease pressure on the EU market, which is still struggling from the Russian ban on imports from February 2014.