Analysis beef slaughter
Bovine slaughter figures remain low in April
Easter and King's Day ensure that fewer cattle are slaughtered in week 16 and week 18 than in the other weeks of April. This means that the slaughter figures in April show anything but a stable development.
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This is evident from the figures published by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO). The figures for April show that the most animals of that month were delivered to the production locations in week 17: 10.239 animals. In week 18, the number fell to 8.737 animals, partly due to King's Day.
The holidays in April usually cause a fluctuation in the number of animals processed in Dutch slaughterhouses. Although it can differ from week to week, because Easter does not fall on a fixed date. Easter and King's Day mean that fewer cattle were slaughtered in weeks 16 and 18 than in the other weeks of April.
No visible corona effect
In the week before Easter (week 15), 9.224 cattle were slaughtered, after which the number returned to 16 in the week of Easter (week 8.450). Week 14 also shows a 'dip', which cannot be explained specifically. This week saw a total of 8.594 slaughters. So far, the current corona crisis has not left a clear pattern in the processing figures of Dutch slaughterhouses.
While pig slaughters have been above the 5-year average for some time, cattle slaughters are showing the opposite trend. The figures are slightly distorted due to the large number of cows that had to be culled in 2017 due to the phosphate legislation. In week 13 of 2017, no fewer than 19.331 cows went to slaughter. After this peak, the number of slaughters decreased steadily again, with the lowest number of slaughters in week 27 with 8.761.