Germany - Meat production in 1st quarter of 2011 stagnating at high level

In the first quarter of 2011, just under 2 million tonnes of meat were produced from commercial slaughtering in Germany.

As reported by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), the trend of continuous strong increases in meat production, which had been observed since 2005, did thus not continue. Factors contributing to this development were the small increases in slaughtering of pigs and poultry and the marked decrease in cattle slaughtering. Compared with the same quarter of the previous year, meat production rose just slightly by 0.4% or just under 8,000 tonnes.