Maltese pork: is it still feasible?

Parliamentary secretary Roderick Galdes has recently blamed the lack of long-term planning by the Pig Breeders Cooperative for the dire situation Maltese pig breeders find themselves in, claiming that the inflated number of pig farms in Malta was pushing the local price of pork up while prices within the EU have dropped, leaving Maltese farmers with no viable sales outlet.

Oliver Frendo, a vet and general manager of the Pig Breeders Cooperative, describes this claim as a  “ridiculous simplification” which ignores the fact that the same problems are being experienced by farms in 25 out of 28 EU member states. 

Moreover, he rebuts any suggestion that the Maltese consumer is paying more for pork than other European consumers, pointing out that in Malta pork costs between €5 and €7 per kilo, compared to €9 and €12 in Germany. The difference is that the price paid by middlemen, such as shop owners and meat processors to buy local pork from Maltese farmers, is higher than in other countries where production costs are lower. 

One of the factors pushing up costs higher for Maltese breeders is the high price of animal feed – “We have the most expensive grain terminal in Europe”, according to Frendo.

This is because the grain terminal was designed decades ago with a view of turning Malta into a hub for the transhipment of cereals. Unfortunately this did not work out as planned and the grain terminal is highly under used. Therefore to avoid losses storage costs had to be raised, resulting in more expensive animal feed. “On average cereals are €90 per tonne more expensive than in mainland Europe. This translates into an extra 30 cents per kg in the production cost of pork”.

Another reason is that production costs are lower for factory farms with thousands of sows each in countries like Spain and Germany.

“If I am producing a million pigs a year and I make an end profit of €1 euro from each pig I am a millionaire but if I am producing 1,000 pigs and make a profit of €1 per pig I would barely make a living…”

Veterinarian Oliver Frendo

He claims that Maltese breeders are simply asking to keep €2 per kg.  

Other countries like Poland, characterised by small-scale operations, have also taken the brunt of competition. Put simply it is cheaper to produce pork if you operate farms with tens of thousands of sows reared by minimum wage employees. 

Does this not simply go to show that the future of small-scale pig breeders is bleak and the future belongs to large-scale operators? I ask.

Frendo rebuts by arguing that consumers are not making any savings, and the lower costs are simply reflected in higher profit margins of large corporations. 

In some cases consumers are paying even higher prices to buy already sliced and portion packed marinated pork, paying up to 10 to 12 Euros per kg.

“Even discount stores like Lidl sell pork at a higher price than that found at local butchers selling local pork at €5 to €6.”

Frendo points out that farmers are only expecting a return of 30% on the selling price and it is this which is considered as being too high by other actors in the supply chain. 

“A farmer spends 10 months producing a kg of pork while the retailer sells it in three days.”

He expressed outrage at how on a European level distributors and wholesalers are imposing the price on producers, driving those who can’t afford these prices out of business.

He insists that the cooperative, which he claims includes all pig breeders except three, is only interested in ensuring that its members get a fair price.

“What the middlemen complain about is about the pig breeder demanding a decent living. We can’t deny our members a decent living simply because Spain overproduced and dumps some meat in our market…”

Added to these woes, local producers even face illegal competitive practices. Despite the ‘Majjal ta’ Malta’ awareness campaign, undermining local pig breeders is the sale of imported pork disguised as local pork.  

The major problem lies with the sale of loose fresh pork on the butcher’s counter. 

“People who buy fresh pork assume it is local as was the case in the past. But today one can get a truck of pork from other countries, from Sicily on a daily basis.”

While in the case of processed pork, the country of origin of the pork has to be specified on the label, no such obligation exists on fresh loose pork but it is still illegal to mislead consumers that the pork is local.

“There have been isolated cases of retailers verbally misinforming consumers that imported pork is local. This is fraudulent. Thankfully the majority of retailers do not engage in such practices.”

Why is Maltese pork better than the imported product?

Apart from the fact that thanks to the climate Maltese pigs “have access to natural ventilation and sunlight”, the main reason is that local breeders are not geared for export and therefore offer the premium product to the local market. Other countries tend to offer the premium product for local consumption while exporting their “second best”.

He also points out that it is easier to enforce health and animal welfare standards in a small country with a limited number of small establishments like Malta, than in countries with a large number of farms.

“In a country with only 98 farms which are all 15 minutes away from the authorities it is possible to check all the farms annually… In Spain they have to take representative samples. Only 5% of farms are inspected each year.”

He also points out that in Malta farms are managed by their owners and not by minimum wage earners.  

“They know whether a sow is injured or sick.  These people know each sow by number. If you go to a farm in Spain you find 500 fattening pigs in each shed. They literally find dead pigs on the floor when they are taking pigs to the slaughter house”.

It is quality which, according to Frendo, can give Maltese breeders a competitive advantage, especially when restaurants and smaller outlets buy pork. 

Frendo also argues that buying local pork makes sense for people concerned about environmental sustainability and animal welfare.  

But isn’t the local pig industry responsible for the release of vast amounts of pig slurry into the drainage system? I refer to a recent report on agricultural waste management, which set a wide range of slurry production from 12,500m3 to a much higher volume of 157,300m3 and claims that slurry ends up clogging sewage treatment plants.

Frendo rebuts, explaining that pig slurry is highly liquid and similar in consistency to human excrement and therefore cannot be responsible for clogging filters in treatment plants, mainly because pig farms do not use bedding like hay or straw, which may end up mixed with the waste.   

Moreover pig breeders do not have to power-hose the floors every day – the animals do not stand in their own faeces – their urine and faeces go down through gaps in the concrete flooring, which is collected and does not mix with straw or hay, with the result of blocking sewage treatment plants. 

What is sure is that EU legislation obliges Malta to treat animal waste separately from human waste and that Malta presently lacks a system to cater for this.

Breeders are presently obliged to store slurry for not more than 21 days and take the slurry to dropping points allocated by the government, where it is mixed with other drainage.  

Frendo blames the situation on the lack of investment in anaerobic digestion, a process that can change animal waste into energy. He dismisses the idea of exporting this waste as a costly way of removing a potential resource which would have to be replaced by chemical fertilizers.

Frendo recognises that the number of breeding farms has to be reduced and that restructuring is needed. But he is offended by the suggestion made by Galdes that the solution is for pig breeders to diversify their operations, moving away from pigs to other breeds of animals, such as sheep and goats, or to consider other options such as agro-tourism to replace their pig-breeding operation. 

“To suggest that a pig farmer knows how to rear sheep and goats as if there is no skill involved, as if one is born with this natural ability, is offensive and it is something which people who do not know anything about the subject would say… If I have been rearing pigs for 30 years I can’t just switch to rearing sheep or shift to the hospitality sector. It is like telling me to start doing accounts simply because there are too many veterinarians.”

But why didn’t the cooperative use EU funds to restructure and become more competitive?

The problem, according to Frendo, was that EU funds aimed at restructuring the sector were channelled to firms involved in the processing of pork instead of helping local producers set up their own processing plant. Incredibly processors are not even obliged to buy a proportion of their pork from local producers. This has led to a situation that some processors have ended up investing in cold stores, which they could stock up with imported pork.