Hit by an outbreak of porcine epidemic diarrhea, shipments of hogs are expected to post this year’s largest year-on-year drop in October, amounting to 88.9 percent of shipments a year before, Japan Pork Producers Association has announced.
According to the association’s forecast compiled based on surveys on producers, the shipments in the July-December period are predicted to total 96.3 percent of the same period last year.
Because of sluggish supply at home, pork imports have been maintained at high levels, and the association fears that the imports would increase further if this trend continues.
The association is calling on producers to keep on taking disease prevention measures against PED, such as giving vaccinations to hogs, considering that although infections have been put under control, the PED outbreak could occur again when the weather gets colder.
The association conducted the survey on 32 farms randomly chosen from its members nationwide. Deaths of piglets caused by PED were reported by 11 farms, the number totaling 18,518. The total number of mother sows grown in the 32 farms amounted to 30,000, and the farms shipped a total of 656,000 hogs in 2013.
Total hog shipments for 2014 are estimated to drop 1 percent from a year before, the association said. Shipments for the first half of 2014 rose 1.9 percent as the impact of the PED outbreak was not yet significant, but shipments for the latter half of the year are predicted to drop for all months except for August, it said.
The association estimates that shipments for December, when the demand is high, will decline 5.2 percent. It warns that the supply-demand balance might become even tighter if meat producers concerned with persisting low supply increase purchases prior to the year-end gift season.
The association says that although it depends on whether the PED outbreak occurs again or not, shipments for the next year are more or less likely to continue being sluggish.
Out of the 11 farms which reported deaths of piglets, 9 farms responded that their shipments for this year will post year-on-year drops, with the largest predicted drop marking 26.3 percent. Meanwhile, the remaining 2 farms predicted their shipments will increase, giving as reasons relatively small number of deaths and increase in the number of mother sows.
(Aug. 2, 2014)