Prabhupada, May 9, 1975, Perth: This is practical. You are maintaining huge slaughterhouses, regular killing. So, you took instruction from Christ, “Thou shall not kill.” You first of all killed him, and then the killing process is going on among the animals, and declaring wars every now and then. So the killing business is going on regularly. In your regular life also. You are maintaining big, big slaughterhouses. Then when you accepted the instruction of Christ? That I want to know. What is that date? Full Conversation
International Food and Agribusiness Management Review: Germany is one of the major livestock producers in the world. At the end of 2005, there were 281,000 livestock farms in Germany, including 183,400 cattle farmers and 88,700 pig farmers.
The number of cattle decreased from about 14.5 million animals in 2000 to 12.7 million in 2006 due to the existence of milk quota in the EU that limit production and ongoing changes in EU Common Agricultural Policy. Major production areas of cattle are the mountaineous regions in Southern Germany (Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg) and the coastal regions in North-Western Germany (Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein).
Bavaria (3.49 mio. animals), Baden-Wuerttemberg (1.04 mio.), Lower Saxony (2.49 mio.) and Schleswig-Holstein (1.15 mio.) represent about three quarters of German cattle herd size. Total beef production was nearly 1.15 mio. tons in 2006. Average farm size varies greatly between the production regions. In 2005 average farm size was only 51.4 animals (24.5 dairy cows) in Bavaria compared to 95.9 animals (46.4 dairy cows) in Lower Saxony (Destatis, 2006; Destatis, 2007a; Destatis, 2007b).
Germany is the world’s third largest pork producer with an output of 4.7 mio. tons in 2006. In the European Union, Germany is the largest pork producer, followed by Spain, France, Poland and Denmark. After German reunification, German pork production declined due to the privatization process in Eastern Germany and the reduction of production capacities in the new German states. As a result, between 1990 and 1996, herd size decreased from 34.2 million pigs in 1990 to 26.5 million pigs in 1996 (Spiller et al, 2005).
Since then, production has slowly recovered; in 2005, 88,700 pig farmers kept 26.86 mio. pigs. Due to growing imports of slaughter pigs, pork production reached an all-time high in 2006. In 2006, for the first time in history, Germany was a net exporter of pork (Burchardi et al, 2007).
The major pig producing area is located in North-Western Germany close to the Dutch border where 30,400 farmers keep about 14.5 mio. pigs, i.e. about 54% of the German pig herd. A second important production area is, again, Southern Germany (Bavaria: 3.7 mio. pigs on 25,300 farms; Baden-Wuerttemberg: 2.26 mio. pigs on 13,200 farms).
Similar to cattle production, farm size is much larger in Northern Germany. Average herd size is 494.3 pigs in the North-West compared to only 146.7 pigs in Bavaria (Destatis, 2006; Destatis, 2007a).
Poultry production was 1.02 mio. tons in 2006. Similar to pork production, North-Western Germany is a major production area where more than 50% of German poultry production is located (Destatis, 2006; Destatis, 2007c).
German livestock production is characterized by deep structural changes. Between November 2005 and November 2006, 8.9% of all pig farmers and 4.0% of all cattle farmers exited production.
Within the same period of time, the total number of pigs in Germany decreased by only 0.6% and the herd size of cattle was reduced by 1.9%. This means that the remaining livestock farmers grow remarkably. Therefore, about 60% of cattle are now kept on farms with a herd size of 100 or more animals. Concentration is even more impressive in pig farming where only 7,300 farms (out of 88,700 in Mai 2005) produce more than 50% of all German pigs. Average farm size in this category has gone up to 1,859.2 animals (Destatis, 2006).
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