Bavaria's slaughterhouses in conflict - it hardly works without major customers

Created: 01/14/2023 07:04

Meat consumption continues to decline.

© Robert Michael/dpa/symbol image

Less meat consumption, higher demands on animal welfare: It is becoming more difficult for Bavaria's slaughterhouses to break even.

Many of them are dependent on a few major customers.

In some places there are calls for a closure.

Bamberg – About 1,000 pigs and 150 cattle are slaughtered every day on the 5.5-hectare site on the outskirts of Bamberg’s city center – not for long, according to some city council factions: they want to close the slaughterhouse and use the property for other purposes.

The slaughterhouse has been a public limited company since 2020.

This month the city council will decide on the future of the company.

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"Meat consumption is declining," says Hans-Günter Brünker from the Volt/ÖDP/Bambergs Mitte parliamentary group, which initiated a citizens' initiative to close the slaughterhouse.

Brünker is convinced: the slaughterhouse is a loss-making business in the long run - also because of its poor condition, which requires investments worth millions.

The local politician would instead like apartments or “low-emission businesses” at the location.

According to the city of Bamberg, the slaughterhouse has been covering its costs since mid-2022.

At that time, the slaughter prices were increased.

If the city council now votes for the continuation of operations, investments must indeed be made - above all in plant engineering, building infrastructure and waste disposal systems.

Before you can name a sum, an investment plan must be drawn up.

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An economical operation of the slaughterhouse without major customers is not possible

Brünker also criticizes the dependence on the major customers Tönnies and Vion.

"Often the local butcher shops are cited as an argument in favor of the slaughterhouse," says Brünker.

"But these play practically no role." Smaller companies could not pay the slaughter prices and had them slaughtered elsewhere.

Tönnies Holding is based in Rheda-Wiedenbrück, Westphalia, and the food company Vion NV in the Netherlands.

That has nothing to do with the often invoked regionality, says Brünker.

"Just because Tönnies and Vion are not Franconian companies does not mean that the animals slaughtered in Bamberg do not come from here," the city said.

60 percent of the pigs slaughtered in Bamberg come from a radius of 100 kilometers, 80 percent from a radius of 150 kilometers.

35 percent of the cattle would have to travel a maximum of 100 kilometers to their place of slaughter, 71 percent a maximum of 150 kilometers.

According to the city, it would be impossible to operate the slaughterhouse economically without major customers.

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Slaughtering "is not very profitable in itself"

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, there are around 1,800 approved slaughterhouses in Bavaria.

This also included individual slaughter rooms, says Svenja Fries from the state guild association for the Bavarian butcher trade.

The Bamberg slaughterhouse is medium-sized in a Bavarian comparison.

One of the largest companies is the slaughterhouse and cattle yard in Munich, which is the largest municipal company of its kind in Central Europe.

Allgäu Fleisch GmbH operates another large slaughterhouse in Kempten.

The Waldkraiburg slaughterhouse (district of Mühldorf am Inn) is Germany's largest cattle slaughterhouse.

In Kempten, Tönnies is the most important customer, in Waldkraiburg Vion.

Around 40 percent of Bavarian butchers butcher themselves, says Fries.

Many slaughterhouses are under financial pressure: "The slaughtering process itself is not very profitable." A high utilization is important, says the spokeswoman for the butchers' guild: "If you only slaughter twice a week and can't use the room for anything else, then it's worth it Not that.” A common way out is wage slaughter: a butcher buys cattle, pigs or chickens from a farmer, has them slaughtered elsewhere and sells the meat.

The falling meat consumption is not yet noticeable at the slaughterhouses, says Fries: "Some of those who have already stopped even want to start slaughtering again." take turns slaughtering, as Svenja Fries explains.

Examples are Fürth and Fürstenfeldbruck.

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