The bacon trade looks set for a severe epidemic of its traditional midwinter bug, "Februaryitis". Regional reports on Thursday revealed a very slow trade, with the gammon business particularly flat in the wake of the festive season. One packer reported the quietest opening to the year he had ever known ­ even after a long holiday break. British bacon production plummeted in the run up to Christmas, with MAFF recording a 4,600 tonne year on year drop in December's bacon and ham returns at 13,800 tonnes. This is the one month when the proportion of ham in the tonnage can be expected to be relatively low, since Christmas orders are out of the way early in the holiday schedules. But the 1999 returns peg a three year low for pigmeat curing in the UK: 205,100t for the year. The single plunge for December is also significant, given that the month also saw a kill rate briefly topping the 300,000 a week level. It is a direct contrast to 1998, when high kill rates were matched by an 18,400t surge of curing. Traders bought heavily in cheap pigmeat and prayed for a better short term market. They were not lucky last year and there are no signs of their luck changing this. In fact, the last quarter of 1999 showed declining year on year tonnages of cured pigmeat when many would have expected output to be rising. In the event, tonnages last year were closer to 1996 than the two intervening years. {{PROVISIONS }}

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