Feed Bussiness Worldwide: May, 2013

 

 

 

Partly due to protectionism, partly due to drought, pork's streak as the meat line whose trade was expanding the most rapidly has paused. This is unfortunate: Pork may be the least internationally traded of the world's three major meat lines but this state of affairs was rapidly changing.

 

From 2009 to 2012, world pork production increased 5% but the volume of pork internationally traded jumped by 28.5%.

 

And there was good reason for its trade to increase. Although significantly cheaper than beef, pork, like all red meats, is bedeviled by relatively inefficient feed conversion relative to poultry or fish. But at the same time, in cultures as far apart as Germany and China, Vietnam and the Philippines, pork, not beef has always been the red meat of choice. With per capita pork yearly consumption between 32kg and 40kg in China and Vietnam respectively, high cost swine defy the economic gravity of poverty: So long as religion does not get in the way, pork has always been and still remains a red meat of choice among the world's poorest people.