The first cases of African Swine Fever have been confirmed in farm pigs in Germany, the country’s federal agriculture ministry said on Friday.
ASF was confirmed on two small farms in eastern Brandenburg, an area where 1,267 cases have been found in wild boar.
This is not expected to have a major market impact as German pork exports are already banned by many countries outside the European Union.
China and many other international buyers banned imports of German pork in September 2020 after the first ASF case was confirmed in wild animals, leaving Germany to focus on sales within the European Union.
GERMAN PRODUCTION
- In 2020, Germany was the European Union’s largest pork producer at 5.11 million tonnes, just ahead of Spain’s 5.02 million tonnes, EU data shows.
- German production has declining partly in response to waning domestic demand and was at the lowest level since 2007 last year.
- Pig farming in Germany is concentrated in the north-west, in the states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia. The case of ASF was in Brandenburg, which is hundreds of kilometers to the east of the main producing area.
GERMAN EXPORTS
- Germany ships pork and pork products to other EU countries, most notably Italy.
China had been the main market for German exports outside the EU before the trade was banned last year. Most of the pork that would have been shipped to China was re-routed onto the European market.
