Irish pig farming leader, Tom Hogan, has accused the country’s processing factories of undermining the pigmeat market with unnecessary price cuts and has urged all pig farmers to strongly resist price pressure from processors this week.
He said Ireland’s factory price cuts were not justified based on market returns, pointing out that pig prices across the main EU pig producing nations have all stabilised above €1.70c/kg (£1.54p/kg).
“This is after a period of 12 weeks when pig producers across mainland Europe were receiving €1.80c/kg (£1.63p/kg) plus for pigs as the market was returning this level,” said Mr Hogan (pictured above), pigs committee chairman of the Irish Farmers Association (IFA).
“Irish pig farmers never achieved that high price and the Irish price was let fall to well below the EU average. After lagging behind the EU trade for so long, it is completely opportunistic for pig factories to drop Irish pig prices when they never implemented the increases that were due over the past three months.”
He said the latest market update from the UK showed pig prices remaining stable at £1.60/kg (£1.77p/kg).
After the ‘financial hardships that all pig farmers endured during the disastrous pig prices years of 2015-2016’, Mr Hogan called on the processing sector to refrain from manipulating the market in their own interests and offer back to the Irish pig farmer the true value of their product.
He also said the factories must stop undermining the Irish pig production system at this delicate time.