South East Asia Market
Paul Anderson, General Manager South East Asia and International Sales Manager, Genesus Inc.
paulanderson@genesus.com
Thailand
Pig price in Thailand is THB 58/kg (USD 1.7) in early October. The price is forecast to get lower. Consumption is slow in the month because of school vacation and the vegetable festival later in the month. Some Thais stop eating meat for two weeks during the festival.
Pig farmers in Thailand are being united to protest against the government’s move to allow pork imports from the US. Thai prime minister is due to visit US President today (2 Oct 17). One of the issues to be discussed is on importation of US pork to Thailand in exchange of promoting US investments in the country. The farmers, however, said imports of US pork would make Thai consumers at risk from residues of ractopamine, a feed additive widely used in the US to stimulate lean meat production in pigs. With these concerns, Thai FDA and DLD ban the use of the agent in pig feed. The farmers also said the US pork import would ruin the pig industry in Thailand as the cost of production in the country is much higher in the US.
VC Meats new plant
The Thai pork producer has invested £20m in its pork processing plant in Tatchburi province over the last two years. The plant currently works well below its capacity of 5,000 pigs per day. The firm distributes pork in Thailand and Myanmar. VC Meats forms part of the VC Group which owns 35,000 sows and two feed mills which produces 60,000 tonnes monthly. (Source, Asian Meat)
Vietnam
The Liveweight pig price average for this week in Vietnam is 31,500 VND/kg this is just under the cost of production which is between 32-34,000 VND/kg. There are industry rumours of a 35% reduction in the breeding herd size and a similar reduction in the amount of compound feeds being sold by the feed companies, it’s only a matter of time before this becomes a shortage of pig meat available.
The Government of Vietnam is also trying to reduce the risk of overexpansion in the number of sows by making it very difficult to get a license to build a pig farm. Unfortunately this is also making very difficult for the progressive pig producing companies to set up new farms using high technology to get license for building the farm, these are the companies that are also likely to invest in modern new slaughter and meat processing plants to make the supply chain: Feed – Farm – Food safe.
There was a two-day workshop on the 7–8 Sep 2017, on the topic of ‘Improving food safety along the pork value chain—lessons learned and ways forward’, held in Hanoi, Chu Van Chuong, deputy director of the international cooperation department of the Vietnam Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. In his speech, Chuong said, ‘We look forward to further improvements through projects such as those being reviewed today. In the context of food safety, projects like PigRISK and SafePORK are welcome as they can provide policymakers and the public with scientific evidence that leads to actionable policy options to better manage food safety and provide assurance to producers and consumers alike.’
The workshop brought together more than 80 key stakeholders from the livestock, animal health and public health sectors of Vietnam with an aim to find ways to make sure that pig production, processing and the sale of pork is safer.
Pork makes up 75 per cent of all the meat consumed in Vietnam and most of these pork products (83%) are produced by small-scale farmers and are sold in traditional ‘wet’ markets. As pigs can carry high levels of pathogens, ensuring the safety of the country’s pork products is an issue of growing concern as I have mentioned on several occasions before, this can only lead to opportunity for the larger integrated pig producer who focuses on the complete supply chain.
he workshops consisted of two parts: (1) tProject on ‘Reducing disease risks and improving food safety in smallholder pig value chains in Vietnam’, known as PigRISK, and (2) project on ‘Market-based approaches to improving the safety of pork in Vietnam’, known as SafePORK, with the aim to better manage food safety along Vietnam’s pig value supply chains.
Philippines
During the month of August 2017, the Philippines had an outbreak of Avian Flu, The Department of Agriculture has confirmed that the first bird flu case in the country is an H5N6 strain, over 600,000 fowl have had to be culled, consumption of chicken dropped as did the price of broilers for a couple of weeks. This has had a positive effect in stabilising the liveweight pig price in the Philippines with live pig prices for pigs up to 110kgs liveweight still currently around PHP 125/kg (USD 2.4/kg) in Luzon.
Categorised in: Featured News, Global Markets
This post was written by Genesus