TheMeatSite Newsletter - 9 June 2010

TheMeatSite Weekly Newsletter

Wednesday 9th June 2010

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Welcome to this week's newsletter

Editorial: Beef Production Fall Set to Continue

World beef production is expected to fall in 2010 for the third consecutive year.

The USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service is forecasting a 0.7 per cent decline in world production this year compared to 2009. The US is the largest producer of beef and its production is expected to be down 0.8 per cent.

Among the world's five largest beef producing nations, only Brazil is expected to produce more beef this year than last.

Despite less beef being produced, the amount moving in international trade is expected to hold steady or increase slightly.

At the same time, Australian beef exports continued their steady recovery during May, hitting a 14-month high, with increased shipments to the US, Russia, Korea and Taiwan.

Exports for the month, at 85,762 tonnes swt, were up four per cent year-on-year, assisted by higher cattle slaughter since late April and a drop in the A$ throughout the month.

In the US, new legislation introduced by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to tackle the problems of E.coli contamination in food has come under fire.

The American Meat Institute says that while sharing the desire to eradicate E.coli, they are uncertain that the legislation will be effective.

In Europe, welfare campaigners, Eurogroup for Animals, has called on the European Commission, producers and food chain operators to take urgent action on piglet castration.

Chris Harris

This Week's Feature Articles

We have 3 new features this week:

Prevalence of Trichinella in Pigs in Ireland
The Food Safety Authority of Ireland recently conducted a survey to investigate the prevalence of Trichinella in pigs slaughtered in low throughput pig slaughterhouses. From August 2007 to January 2009, a total of 10,247 samples were taken and analysed for Trichinella in 33 slaughterhouses supervised by the local authority veterinary service.

Bulgarian Meat Market
The Bulgarian pork industry is only 45 per cent self sufficient, writes Peter Duggan from the Strategic Information Services at Bord Bia.

Foodborne Pathogens on Cattle Hides
Modern microbial beef safety concept is based on a farm-to-fork principle that involves a wide range of coordinated control measures applied at all relevant steps in the beef chain, writes S Buncic from University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Veterinary Medicine in Serbia in a paper for the Advancing Beef Safety through Research and Innovation conference.