The quotations do move sidewards or just slightly around the level achieved. The Danish quotation, which has been very steady over the past weeks, fell noticeably by a corrected 2.6 cents. In France, the price tends pettily upwards, thus ranking second among the five EU member countries richest in pigs. By a clear margin, Germany ranks second last before the Netherlands.

After the dioxin scandal became public, Germany seems to be in a state of shock. The situation gradually starts to relax, and farms that were closed temporarily are now being allowed to reopen. After about a week's time, a number of test results related to pig feed and pork are now available: As far as is known, all findings are close to the detection limit, which is far below the allowable values. In Europe, everyone seems to have agreed that the dioxin situation is a problem in Germany alone. It it quite understandable that other countries distance themselves from it and try to give greater weight to their own products. As a result of the widespread uncertainty, the German slaughter companies' demand turns out to be very restrained. The Dutch pigs-mature-for-slaughter market is mostly affected by this, because Germany is a popular destination for Dutch pigs to be sold to. Belgian pig feeders are very dissatisfied with the price level currently prevailing. So the Belgian interest group, Vevas, is calling to boycott deliveries until 21st January.

Trend for Germany: With the meat processing business' being reluctant, the backlog supply could not yet be worked off. Currently, the slaughter companies do not make definite committments related to their readiness for acceptance. They rather point to the further development of the dioxin problem. From the ISN's point of view, however, it looks as if the situation starts to relax. It is expected that the last pig farms still closed will be allowed to reopen within the next few days.

Explanation
¹corrected quotation: The official Quotations of the different countries are corrected, so that each quotation has the same base (conditions).
base: 56 per cent lean meat; farm-gate-price; 79 per cent killing out percentage, without value-added-tax (VAT)