Provisional figures for poultry meat production in Italy last year suggest that its performance will be slightly lower than industry forecasts made earlier in the year.
In April 2014, association Unaitalia, which represents the Italian meat and egg sectors, forecast that overall poultry meat production would be higher, with growth coming particularly from broiler production. Turkey meat production being stagnant, it said, and contractions would be recorded for other poultry meat types.
Broiler production
However, provisional data for the year published in December suggest that overall poultry meat production in the country declined by 0.5 percent to stand at 1.25 billion tons, a slight worsening of the performance recorded in 2013, when output declined by 0.2 percent.
The forecasts also predicted that producer margins would improve, given falling feed costs.
However, according to the Milan Chamber of Commerce, although 2014 started with the price of live birds improving, from March through to November, prices contracted each month, with the falls registered in August and September being in excess of 20 percent.
Italy, thought to be the European Union’s sixth largest poultry meat producer, also saw its imports of poultry meat rise and its exports fall, figures for January to August reveal. Over the period, the country imported 60,981 tons of poultry meat, of which 46,898 tons were chicken meat, including 17,064 tons of fresh chicken meat.
Egg production
Italy’s egg sector performed better than the broiler meat sector, and egg production grew by 3 percent to reach 12.54 billion eggs, a turnaround from the contraction recorded in 2013 when the sector saw output decline by 2.14 percent.
Egg production in the country is dominated by enriched cage and barn production, the country having completed the move out of battery cages. These two rearing methods account for 82 percent of production.
Over the first eight months of the year, Italy imported 713,163 eggs, down from the 930,819 imported the year before. Exports for the period stood at 140,307, a significant increase on the 44,479 exported in 2013.
The latest figures reveal that 66 percent of Italy’s eggs are consumed as table eggs, while 34 percent goes to processing.
