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Pig fattening operation: trade refers to the market laws
Photo: Bodo Marks / dpa
Germans eat less and less pork, major events with bratwurst stands are canceled and China has stopped shopping because of swine fever.
This has direct consequences for the pig breeders: The prices are in the cellar and many businesses are in dire straits.
Federal Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner (CDU) promised financial aid at an industry meeting in Bonn.
Representatives of animal keepers, food retailers and the food industry took part in the meeting at the Federal Ministry of Agriculture in Bonn.
In addition to Klöckner, the Agriculture Ministers of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia were also present, Barbara Otte-Kinast and Ursula Heinen-Esser (both CDU).
In both federal states, around 60 percent of pigs are kept in Germany.
In Lower Saxony, for example, there are 5,000 farms with around 8.2 million pigs.
Heinen-Esser and Otte-Kinast also assured that the tax offices of their countries could help quickly and at short notice and were ready to do so.
You could defer tax, waive tax prepayments, and defer enforcement.
Tax deferrals possible
The federal government extended the application deadline for Corona aid until the end of the year and supported farmers financially with the renovation of the barn, said Klöckner.
They also asked the EU Commission to examine short-term measures - and to approve a significant increase in the currently applicable upper limit for the so-called de minimis aid of 20,000 euros per company within three tax years.
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The federal government is also having "intensive talks" with China and France, for example, about buying German pork despite the African swine fever. Other countries such as Canada or Vietnam have accepted the so-called regionalization concept and allow imports from unaffected federal states, as Klöckner emphasized. Swine fever was first discovered in a wild boar in Brandenburg a year ago and was finally found in domestic pigs in Brandenburg in July. Animal disease is not dangerous for humans, but it is even more dangerous for animals.
Klöckner said that all those involved in the meeting would have rejected an exit bonus.
"The unanimous opinion was that we don't want that." Such help in giving up the business forever sends the wrong signal to the younger generation;
the meat that is no longer produced there is also replaced by imports from abroad.
Klöckner appealed: "Everyone in the value chain must pull together and find solutions together." All three ministers warned retailers against "selling off" meat.
The German Trade Association (HDE) had already assured in advance of the meeting that the food retail trade had "a great interest in reliable supply chains and economically stable producers".
The association sees possible further measures of the retail trade to support producer prices through the antitrust prohibition of price fixing and the great importance of the world market in price formation but "narrow limits".
Everyone agreed that a conversion of the animal husbandry was necessary, said Otte-Kinast.
The company's wish that "everything from birth to the counter comes from Germany has its price."
Klöckner was also convinced that there will only be one market for animal welfare products in the future.
It will take "three or four years" until the current crisis is over, said Otte-Kinast.
Swine fever "we will have for a long time".
Greenpeace's agricultural expert, Martin Hofstetter, reiterated the call for the number of animals in agriculture to be halved by 2045. "This is the only way to bring supply and demand back into balance and stabilize prices."
mik / AFP