Beef export plan points to slaughter fall in Argentina
31/07/2015
Part of the plan is to slow down slaughter-rates in Argentina over the next 18 months and the packers involved in putting the plan together have also called for lower export taxes to allow them to boost market-share and create up to 300,000 new jobs in the coming years.
Argentina’s cattle slaughter was 11.6 million head in 2012 and 12.9 million in 2013, an increase of 11.2%. In the first half of 2014, official slaughter was almost 6.2 million head, more or less flat compared to the same period in 2013.
Packers want to send fewer cattle to abattoirs and for prices to go up. They have said they will work with counterparts in the poultry and pork sectors to encourage consumers in the domestic market to choose these sources of protein instead of beef more frequently, allowing them to concentrate on selling Argentinean beef on export markets for higher prices.
This means fewer Argentinean hides will become available to tanners, but the packers who have come up with the new plan appear unfazed by that. The secretary general of a meat industry labour organisation, Damián Deheza, said on announcing details of the plan: “Meat by-products such as hides have fallen in value by around 80%. Packers know they have customers for those by-products but they cannot keep slaughtering animals because of that; the pay-back is too small.”
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