Germany: further drop in meat production in 2021

According to preliminary results, commercial slaughterhouses in Germany produced 7.6 million tons of meat in 2021. As reported by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), this was 2.4% less than in the previous year. This means that meat production has been declining since 2017 compared to the previous year. A total of 56.2 million pigs, cattle, sheep, goats and horses and 668.7 million chickens, turkeys and ducks were slaughtered in the slaughterhouses in 2021..

Pork: slaughter volume down 2.9% – slaughter of imported pigs almost halved

With 51.8 million animals slaughtered in 2021, the number of pigs slaughtered fell by 2.9% compared to the previous year. The number of pigs of domestic origin slaughtered fell by 0.8% to 50.6 million animals. The number of imported pigs slaughtered on German farms fell by 49% to 1.2 million animals. In total, the amount of meat produced in Germany in 2021 was almost 5.0 million tons. That was 2.9% less than in 2020. This is the fifth year in a row that pork production has fallen – a total of 11% compared to the meat volume in 2016.

Beef: slaughter volume decreased by 1.8%

The number of cattle slaughtered commercially in 2021 fell by almost 1.0% compared to 2020 to 3.2 million animals. The slaughter volume of 1.1 million tons of beef was 1.8% below the previous year’s result. Compared to 2016, beef production decreased by 7.1%.

Poultry meat: slaughter volume decreased by 1.6%

The amount of poultry meat produced fell by 1.6% in 2021 compared to 2020 to just under 1.6 million tons. The main reason for the decline is the 7.4% drop in production of turkey meat (turkey meat) to 0.4 million tons. On the other hand, the production of young broilers increased by 1.4% to 1.1 million tons. In 2016, 1.5 million tons of poultry meat was produced, 4% less than in 2021.

https://www.destatis.de/