Livestock Farmers: Meat Price Increase Inevitable, Reined In Only by Decreased Consumption

The drop in the consumption of meat in Serbia has stopped the price increase, but the price increase of meat is inevitable, because the livestock population is decreasing rapidly, and the imports will decrease as well after the meat prices increase in Europe by around 50%, livestock farmers warned today.

The president of the SPAS association of agricultural producers of Serbia, Zoran Milicevic, said for Beta that the demand for live head of livestock had nearly stopped and that the prices of animal feed had exploded and that 60-70 dinars per kilogram was lost in the production of pigs.

According to him, producers are experiencing great problems, as animal feed is too expensive, and even if they wanted to buy it, they don’t have the money, because they can’t sell the livestock that is ready for slaughter.

He said that the pig population in Serbia was a half of what it had been around twenty years before, when there were around five million pigs, the amount that the local market consumed at the time.

He added that the livestock population was devastated to the extent that there was not enough young livestock or livestock for fattening either.

A co-owner of the meat company Matijevic, Bojan Matijevic, said that the demand for meat had dropped around 30% and that consumers in Serbia mostly bought chicken meat, because it was the cheapest.

He pointed out that the subsidies in Serbia for agriculture were small and nowhere near the financial incentives that agriculturists got in European countries.

IM Matijević d.o.o. Novi Sad

Mesna industrija Matijević

Sabor proizvođača agroprivrede

SPAS

Zoran Milićević

Bojan Matijević

increase of meat prices

demand for live head of livestock

increase in prices of animal feed

production of pigs

demand for pork and beef

purchasing power of consumers

meat packing plants

subsidies for agriculture