Malta, along with Bulgaria, saw the largest decrease in relative pig population in the EU in 2022, according to Eurostat data.
The local pig population shrank by 26% between December 2021 and December 2022, as did Bulgaria's.
“It’s no surprise,” the general manager of the Pig Breeders’ Cooperative Society, Oliver Frendo said.
“At the beginning of this year, we were very short on pigs,” he said.
At the end of 2021, Malta’s pig stock stood at 40,050 but by the end of 2022, it was cut down to 29,550.
Frendo explained that the local industry, much like overseas, sees peaks and troughs in production as the market and its costs shift.
However, since 2019, the European pig sector had suffered outbreaks of African swine fever while local producers also had a tough time because of the COVID pandemic.
“There is a lot of uncertainty in the sector, costs have never been this high,” he said.
“Any small-scale production in the European market is difficult… We are a tiny island in a huge single market.
“We aren’t seeing people leaving the industry, but rather they are pulling back on production.”
Frendo also noted that a count of pig stock may be misleading as the single stat does not reflect the two types of pig: for breeding and for slaughter.
If a decrease is seen in slaughter, this may only indicate that stock is low during that specific count whereas a low number of breeding pigs may have more long-term effects, he said.
EU Trends
The decreasing number of pigs is an EU-wide trend with only two countries able to bolster their stock – Italy which saw an increase of 4% and Sweden with an addition of 3%.
The trend is also not pig specific. According to the EU statistics service, all livestock had dropped in the past decade across the EU with goats seeing the harshest decline.
Pig populations were the one exception to the rule until 2020s.
However, whereas most EU states also saw a decrease in bovine stock, Malta was one of the five countries to see an increase in cattle (around 1%).
The Czech Republic, Lithuania, Poland the Netherlands all saw increases in bovine.