Charcuterie alarm: pork prices at an all-time high

It was not enough to have the swine fever damage, with all that it entails in terms of slowing down non-EU exports. Now the surge in pork prices has also been added to the mix. "We have reached the highest values ever recorded in the history of our sector," denounced Lorenzo Beretta, whom yesterday the Assica annual assembly elected as the new president of the Italian pork butchers. "The spread of swine fever itself has contributed to hampering the recovery of national pig production, squeezing the supply of available meat and pushing up prices. Price increases have continued throughout 2023, due to the low supply of pork in Italy and Europe'.

However, these are not the only increases that are worrying the companies in the sector: 'Production costs,' Beretta explains, 'have also risen due to interest rates, the renewal of labour contracts and energy, the prices of which, although falling, have not yet returned to pre-2022 levels.

The hypothesis, on the other hand, that Beijing will hit the European Union with duties on pork, in response to European duties on electric cars, for once does not harm Italian-made products: 'China,' Beretta recalls, 'has been a closed market for us since January 2022, that is, since swine fever was first detected in our country. Since then, neither Italian cold cuts nor pork can be exported. This also applies to German products, since the disease is also widespread in Germany'. A possible retaliatory duty by Beijing would therefore only affect part of the EU: Spain and Denmark above all, but also France and Holland to some extent.

In Italy, the companies belonging to Assica are worth EUR 9.5 billion in terms of revenue. But if the 2023 turnover is up by 6.6%, the same cannot be said of production, which increased by only 0.7%. 2023 also saw exports of Italian cured meats rise by 6.2% in volume, for a total of over 2.1 billion euro, but this is an overall figure: while sales to EU markets increased, those to the USA, Great Britain and Canada fell. A drop, this one, on which the export restrictions due to the spread of swine fever have now also impacted. In particular, since the first carcasses of infected wild boar were found in the Parma hills in April, for the first time some production areas of PDO Crudo di Parma have ended up under Restriction Zone 2, which entails blocking exports to countries such as Canada, Japan and, for less mature products, also to the United States.

The international situation still remains very complex. "With Canada - explains the newly appointed president Beretta - we are making progress in the negotiations to re-admit Italian products to the country and I hope that by the end of the summer we will have good news. There are also openings on the part of Japan: 'We have started exporting the first cooked hams to Tokyo again, previously everything was at a standstill,' Beretta recalls.