Monthly indicators of pig production cost in different countries

Poster. Due to strong international competition, it is essential to assess the production costs and their trend in different countries, in order to compare them to the French situation.The IFIP (French institute for pig and pork industry) have identified production costs models, which are being updated monthly by including feeding prices, in Europe (France, Netherlands), North America (US, Canada) and South America (Brazil). We have described these models, and harmonised their outcome, to allow comparisons between countries. In particular, we studied the effect of the rise in feeding costs in the second half of 2007 on the total production cost. Important differences have been reported among countries, due to differences in market behaviours, to the portion of the total cost represented by the feeding cost, and to considerable fluctuations in the exchange parity.