Statistics released from the CSO today show that the number of cattle slaughtered in November 2013 was 3.9 per cent lower than in November 2012.
That fall represents 5,800 less cattle killed on November 2012 figures. Weekly department figures released yesterday showed that 32,228 beef animals were killed last week, which is 509 down on the previous week.
Driving most of the fall in the beef kill has be the performance of the young bull market. The back end of the year has seen a big fall off in the number of young bulls being killed.
The young bull kill was well down last week on the previous week with over 3,000 less bulls killed. It also remains down on last year now running eight per cent behind last year’s figures.
A further comparison of the CSO November 2013 and November 2012 slaughtering figures also shows that sheep slaughterings increased marginally by 0.7 per cent. However, pig slaughtering’s decreased by 7.0 per cent.
Cumulatively comparison of figures for January to November 2013 with the corresponding period of 2012 shows that cattle slaughterings increased this year by 7.2 per cent and sheep slaughterings increased by 7.5 per cent.
However, coupled with the fall this month pig slaughterings decreased between January and November by 2.7 per cent. Speaking to recently Bord Bia‘s Peter Duggan outlined that the Blue Ear/PRRS outbreak had a significant impact on supply numbers from August of this year onwards.
He observed that pig supply figures for Ireland which include live exports to Northern Ireland were down between 5,000 to 10,000 head from August onwards, directly related to PRRS.
“Normally supply is at around 70,000 head but it was back to between 60,000 and 65, 000,” he added.