The outbreak of the bovine and swine fever (MKS) in Germany may have consequences for consumers. “We need stable or even slightly rising meat prices at the supermarket now” said Gereon Schulze Althoff, the head of the Association of the Meat Industry (VDF), to the “Spiegel”. “Because we can only pay the farmers what is also paid at the supermarket cash registers.”
The VDF is already anticipating a sales loss of around 500 million euros due to import stoppages. This would be equivalent to half of the industry’s annual sales from exporting meat to non-EU countries. So far, the UK, South Korea, and Mexico have imposed import stoppages. In international trade, the principle is often applied that meat and other animal products can only be imported from countries that are free of MKS.
As the income from meat exports is lost, the industry now needs to generate revenue from the meat sold in Germany, making prices for farmers viable, according to Schulze Althoff. Livestock breeders fear that slaughterhouses may pay lower prices if they can no longer profitably market certain parts of the animal abroad. The MKS outbreak is “another, very hard blow for the entire livestock sector” said Schulze Althoff.