New Zealand Pork said not listing butchers as essential services had effectively removed 40% of local pork sales and pigs now had nowhere to go as wholesalers didn’t have enough freezing or storage space.
Late on Thursday Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor responded by saying butchers will be allowed to process pork but only to supply supermarkets or other essential retailers.
NZ Pork chief executive David Baines said it was a disappointing response leaving 5000 excess pigs on farm, jamming pig pens and falling foul of the animal welfare code.
Industry representatives, including manufacturers and importers, held two conference calls with MPI on Friday to find homes for the displaced pigs.
“We think we’ve got a combination of solutions that could work,” Baines said.
The thrust of the arrangements is that pork importers and bacon and small goods manufacturers such as Hellers will take more locally produced pork, slowing the supply of imported pork into supermarkets by storing the frozen product.
Baines said while it isn’t a sustainable solution it could help avert the immediate problem.
There are about 93 commercial pork farms in NZ producing about 40%, 12,500 pigs a week, of the 110,000 tonnes Kiwis eat annually.
Most of the imported product – some 70,000 tonnes – comes from the European Union and North America.
About 85% of landed product is used in bacon. The rest is used in other processed foods including ham, sausages or marinated and injected pork products.
Very little pork is exported.
“It would be great to be able to export more of our pork but as a small-scale producer there are lots of barriers to export, including high feed input cost and high welfare standards relative to other global producers.”
The upshot is imported pork is being landed at about $2/kg cheaper than locally grown.
“One of the reasons is that imported pork doesn’t have to meet NZ’s animal welfare or environment standards.”
Baines said there are some small scale exporters, notably into the Pacific Islands and Singapore.
“We’re starting to get some calls. One expat Kiwi has contacted us to import into the food service trade in Singapore but we think these will be only selected, value-added cuts, however, we’ll be looking at all avenues.”
Another hurdle is the existing country-to-country agreements in place.
“There is no agreement in place for the importation of raw pork into NZ or to China and it is unlikely the Chinese would go for a one-way deal without reciprocity.” – BusinessDesk
