INTERVIEW: NH Foods to Address Spanish Pork Ban with Substitutes

Tokyo, April 21 (Jiji Press)--Major Japanese meat packer NH Foods Ltd. plans to launch more bacon substitutes to address a shortage of pork belly, a raw material for bacon, triggered by a ban on imports of Spanish pork caused by an African swine fever outbreak, its president, Fumio Maeda, has said.

The company is set to roll out new products made of meat other than pork belly as early as this autumn. "We will take the share we can capture," Maeda said in a recent interview with Jiji Press.

Since Japan introduced the ban in November last year, NH Foods has stepped up product development to hedge against soaring pork belly prices.

In March, the company launched Schau Slice, a bacon substitute made with minced meat typically used for sausages.

Pork belly remains scarce, with inventories likely to "thin significantly as early as July," he said, underscoring the urgency to develop additional substitutes.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]