Defra’s latest UK slaughter statistics have highlighted a significant year-on-year increase in pork production in December, driven largely by soaring cracase weights, as the UK pigmeat market continues to come under pressure.
December UK clean pig slaughterings were up 2.4% year on year at 872,000 head, notable in itself. However, factoring in much higher carcase weights, pigmeat production, at 82,000 tonnes, was a massive 6.5% up on December 2024.
The December 2025 clean kill figure compared with 868,000 head in November and 947,000 head in October. The breakdown by country shows 708,000 clean pig slaughterings in England, 151,000 in Northern Ireland and 14,000 in Scotland.
The figures also showed a 23% year-on-year increase in the number of sows and boars slaughtered to 16,000 head.
However, the bigger contributor to the 6.5% pork production increase was rising slaughter weights, which averaged 91.7kg in December 2025, compared with 88.5kg a year earlier, a 3.2kg difference.
This reflected a combination of strong autumn growth rates, a lack of the usual pre-Christmas ‘pull through’ by processors, ample supplies and various factory problems, mainly linked to one of the big processors, resulting in pigs being rolled on farms.
The situation has worsened in January – the average weight in the SPP sample hit 95.76kg for the week ending January 10. Up by a further 1.28kg on the week, this was 4kg above year earlier levels and only fractionally below the record level seen at the height of the pig backlog in January 2022.
Meanwhile, the UK pig price also continues to come under pressure from plummeting EU pig prices, with some heavy reductions to processor contribution prices seen on Friday.
You can read more in the latest edition of the Tribune, which provides weekly market updates every Monday morning.