Total meat production from commercial slaughterhouses in Germany in 2017 was two percent or 167,000 metric tons (mt) below the previous year’s level at 8.11 million metric tons (mmt).
Overall output was down in all major meat categories, according to the latest figures from the Federal Statistics Office, Destatis.
At 1.514 mmt, poultry meat production in 2017 was just 0.8 percent below the previous year’s level. Only for the broiler sub-group was output higher than in 2016 — by 1.3 percent at 970,600 mt. Last year, Germany produced 36,000 mt of duck meat (-12.7 percent), and 465,600 mt turkey meat (-3.7 percent).
National output of the country’s favorite meat, pork, was 2.3 percent lower at just under 5.454 mmt, and at almost 57.865 million, 2.6 percent fewer pigs were slaughtered in Germany than in the previous year.
At 23,500, there were 1,000 fewer German farms with pigs in November of 2017 than 12 months earlier, according to a previous Destatis report. However, the total number of animals on those facilities was up by 0.6 percent or 176,700 at almost 27.553 million. There were slightly fewer sows (1.904 million; -0.2 percent) and finishing pigs (12.22 million; -0.3 percent) than in the same month of 2016, but the counts of piglets and growing pigs had increased by 0.5 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively.
Taken together, these two sets of statistics point to a generally stable but ever more concentrated pig population in Germany, while increasing numbers of animals are possibly being finished and slaughtered in other countries.
Compared with 2016, the total number of cattle slaughtered showed a 3.1 percent fall at 3.501 million, and at 20,600, there were also 2.5 percent fewer sheep processed at German slaughterhouses last year.
