I would like to know why the price of pork has increased significantly in recent times. Is it purely to do with the increasing cost of animal feed or are there other reasons?
Lower supplies are the main reason for the higher pig prices. Home-produced supplies have fallen because of past declines in the breeding herd, with higher feed prices being an important factor here. Imported supplies are lower because of reduced production in some other EU countries plus the impact of a significant decline in the sterling exchange rate - which will have further pushed up import prices in UK terms.
The cost of producing pig meat has been sharply
higher in the past couple of years. So it is likely that if prices had not risen
there would be a much sharper contraction of abattoir throughputs than we are
currently seeing.
Also consumer demand for pig meat in the UK has been
quite resilient in the face of the recession. I think it might have been helped
by consumers switching from lamb and beef - which are higher priced
meats.