German pig prices stable on hopes foot-and-mouth disease contained

HAMBURG (Reuters) - German pig prices were stable as fears subsided that foot-and-mouth disease in the country will spread, industry groups said on Wednesday.

German slaughterhouse pig prices on Wednesday were 1.72 euros ($1.79) a kilo, unchanged on the week, said German livestock and meat production association VEZG. Pig farming association ISN also said prices stabilised.

The VEZG said the mood in the pigmeat market was tense but volumes on sale were sufficient to meet demand and prices were steady.

Germany announced the country's first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in nearly 40 years on Jan. 10 in a herd of water buffalo near Berlin in the Brandenburg region.

But that remains an isolated case, with no others reported since. Some emergency measures to restrict the disease were lifted on Friday but quarantine zones remain in force.

German pig prices had fallen, but relatively moderately, from around 1.82 euros a kilo before the foot-and-mouth case was confirmed.

“The lack of new cases brings hope that the disease has been contained,” one meat trader said. “It also looks like German sales inside the EU will continue.”

The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said Germany's effortsto stop the disease spreading would enable the regionalisation principle to be used.

Under this, sales of meat and dairy products are only restricted from the region where the disease has been confirmed and produce from elsewhere in the affected country can still be sold inside the EU.

Measures to contain the highly infectious disease, which poses no danger to humans, often involve bans on imports of meat and dairy products from affected countries, with Britain and South Korea imposing import bans on Germany.

Foot-and-mouth disease causes fever and mouth blisters in cloven-hoofed ruminants such as cattle, pigs, sheep and goats.

(Reporting by Michael Hogan, editing by Tomasz Janowski)