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Deadweight Price Reporting (DWPR) is the EU scheme whereby larger abattoirs must submit weekly bulk price data for pig carcases. The EU uses deadweight price information collected from all member states to decide whether it needs to do anything to support the industry.

Which abattoirs need to report

Abattoirs that slaughter 500 or more clean pigs per week on a yearly average basis must report prices weekly to the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB).

Abattoirs also need to keep and provide details of any supplementary payments made after the initial data has been submitted. This information must be sent to Defra only.

Where and when to send information

You must email the weekly price information to dead.weight@ahdb.org.uk by Monday evening of each week.

Supplementary payment information must be emailed to prices@defra.gov.uk within 7 days from the end of the quarter the payment was made in. You do not have to submit this data to AHDB.

Which animals to include

Your weekly data to AHDB must relate to individual pigs slaughtered during the previous week (from Monday to Sunday).

Supplementary payment information must relate to individual pigs which have received an additional payment after the original data was submitted to AHDB. If the payment was made before the details relating to that carcase are submitted to AHDB, the extra payment will be included in the original data you supply to AHDB.

Only report the prices of animals that you purchase from suppliers on a deadweight basis and that have been graded against the Union scale.

Do not report:

• prices for animals purchased from liveweight markets
• prices for animals killed in your abattoir for a third party on a contract-kill basis
• organic and free range prices
• Sows
• Fully condemned records
• Inter-company traded/company owned pigs

How to report on deadweight pricing

Weekly Information to be sent to AHDB

You must supply the following for each animal, in this order:

• date of slaughter
• EU carcase class category
• cold weight, minus flare fat, kidneys, diaphragm and tongue, if applicable
• price (per/kg)
• kill number

Each of these pieces of data is represented by numbers and/or letters as described below. These number and letter codes form a long string for each animal.

Dressing specification

Data on dressing specifications lets AHDB adjust prices to be comparable.

If you choose to use the UK specification you must make AHDB aware that you have used it.

You must dress pig carcases according to either the EU or the UK dressing specification. You cant use your own dressing specification.

The EU specification

Before weighing the carcase, you must remove the:

• tongue
• bristles (hair)
• hooves
• genital organs
• flare fat
• kidney
• diaphragm

The UK specification

In the UK, abattoirs are allowed to present pig carcases according to the UK specification.

This means dressing carcases the same as EU specification, but leaving the following parts:

• kidneys
• flare fat
• diaphragm

You can leave the tongue in or take it out.

Weigh carcases

You must record carcase weights as they appear on the actual scale display. You must not round the weight up or down.

You must weigh the dressed carcase for its warm weight. Wherever possible, you must do this not more than 45 minutes after the pig has been stuck.

The table below shows the other factors that affect the warm weight that you record for the carcase and the reductions you should apply (also called coefficients).

To calculate the cold weight, deduct 2% from the warm weight.

Grade carcases

At the time of weighing, abattoirs registered with the Pig Carcase Grading Scheme must also assess and grade the lean meat content of the carcase.

The approved instruments to use for measuring back fat are:

• Intra-scope (Optical Probe)
• Fat-O-Meater (FOM)
• Hennessy Grading Probe (HGP II)
• CSB Ultra-Meater
• AutoFom (fully automatic ultrasonic carcase grading)

You must then use the results to grade the carcase according to this scale:

Price

Report the price that you pay the supplier for each animal on delivery to the abattoir, net of VAT. You should report the prices on a gross basis, before any deductions have been made for elements such as procurement, transport, insurance, processing and slaughter, meat inspection, lorry wash, AHDB levy or any other below the line charges. (A below the line deduction being a small and insignificant cost compared to the value of the carcase.)

The following payments should be included:

• in pence per kilo, rounded either to the nearest whole pence or to one decimal place
• level delivery bonus paid on slaughter
• sex bonus (bonus paid if a proportion of pigs are gilts)
• freedom foods bonus
• any bonuses paid due to special rearing or feeding programmes
• haulage allowance
• any bonuses to incentivise delivery times

Level delivery bonus paid in arrears should not be included.

If you restrict the weight on which a carcase is paid, then report the price per kilo as the total price paid, divided by the actual weight of the carcase.

Kill number

The kill number can be any number of digits, but that number must stay the same for a particular centre. So if your abattoir uses 12-digit kill numbers, but for some reason 11-digit numbers are sometimes assigned, you must add a space or a zero to make sure that 12 numbers appear in the DWPR data string for each animal (do not use tabs).

Supplementary payment information to be sent to Defra

Abattoirs will be provided with a template to record the information needed. Each category and grade which falls under DWPR are included on the template. You need to provide the total number of carcases, total amount of bonus paid and total cold weight (Kg).

You should also send nil returns to Defra.

How to send the data

For detailed advice on the format needed for your weekly data, contact AHDB.

Information about supplementary payments must be emailed to prices@defra.gov.uk

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