AUSTRALIA.
PORK SHORTAGE.
According to the CEO of Australian Pork Limited, Andrew Spencer, more than 40% of pig farmers got out of the business in the last year.
This was caused by the high feed and fuel prices, coupled with the large number of pork imports due to the high Australian dollar.
Now that feed and fuel are back in price, the low dollar, has stopped cheap imports, it has come to late for many of Australia’s farmers.
Andrew said " the other reason was that there was a huge surge of imports coming in from North America and Europe, mainly from government subsidized countries and that meant there was no market for the Australian product".
In the 1960’s there were around 40 to 50,000 pig producers in Australia, today there are only around 1,500.
There could be a national shortage by Xmas according to Andrew and he urged customers to support the industry saying, " what we are trying to do is ask customers to hang in there. Pig producers in Australia have been through an extremely tough time and those that are still in it have got to know start making some profit so that they can remain in it".
This is in fact been a global problem, with pork meat plants closing down and staff being laid off.
