Competitive aspects of quality in the Hungarian meat industry

Nagyné Pércsi, Kinga

Keywords: competitiveness, specialisation, promotion, investment, S/EUROP classification

The basis of the study was a survey of registered, derogated and approved plants producing fresh meat or meat products between the end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006. The main results of the survey can be summarised as follows:

Registered plants consider the lack of the solvent domestic demand to be the leading problem of the certified quality assurance schemes for pork (Certified Pork Programmes). Insufficient promotion connected to the schemes, which emphasize the necessity of co-operation and collective promotion to increase the competitiveness of the sector, comes a close second to the aforementioned problem.

Hungarian meat industry companies try to compensate for the effects of multinational retail chains’ price reduction aims and for increasing costs by reducing investment, especially in those fields which do not serve the purpose of meeting regulatory requirements (food-safety, environmental protection). Product marketing is an example of such a field, in which only a small proportion of the investigated plants intend to invest in the future. Previous investments were also unrelated to product marketing, although it would be very important to improve the competitive ability of the companies. These tendencies can lead to choice reduction and a deterioration of product quality.

It also emerged from the survey that some of the slaughterhouses do not pay the farmers on the basis of the S/EUROP classification for pork. To settle this problem co-operation between trade associations and the Product Board would be very important.

Full article