February 13, 2023

Germany's commercial meat production dropped 8.1% last year

Meat production in Germany had fell sharply in 2022.

As reported by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), commercial slaughterhouses produced 7.0 million tonnes of meat last year, based on preliminary results. This was 8.1% or 0.6 million tonnes less than in the previous year.

Domestic meat production has declined every year since a record volume in 2016 (8.3 million tonnes), but never as much as in 2022. A total of 51.2 million pigs, cattle, sheep, goats and horses and 701.4 million chickens, turkeys and ducks were slaughtered in slaughterhouses in 2022.

In 2022, 47.0 million pigs were slaughtered, a decrease of 9.2% or 4.8 million head compared to the previous year. The number of slaughtered pigs of domestic origin decreased by 9.6% to just under 45.8 million animals. Following the significant decline in 2021, the number of imported pigs slaughtered on German farms increased by 6.5% to just over 1.2 million animals in 2022.

In total, slaughterhouses produced around 4.5 million tonnes of pork in 2022. This was 9.8% or 485,000 tonnes less than in 2021. Compared to 2016, about 1.1 million tonnes less pork was produced in 2022, a decrease of almost 20%. One reason for the declining pork production is the declining pig inventory in Germany.

- Destatis (Germany)