What happened this week: Another very active week for hides suitable for side leather and automotive. However, by no means are the shoe and accessory leather tanners the driving force. Shoe business worldwide continues to be good and tanners as well as manufacturers are busy to cover their needs. We hear also voices that confirm that leather prices have been increased. All the sales we generated were effected into Europe what is not a particularly good sign. Cows were quite the opposite. Although having returned from their holidays we haven’t had any interest from our Asian customers so far and also the classical Italian buyers have not been very active.

Since the demand for cows has not been at all good over the past 8 weeks prices have not at all benefited despite all the hype about BSE. Under normal market conditions we would call this an extremely bad sign. Worrying are the news that the BSE hysteria is now spreading all over the world and getting out of control. Slaughter in many countries is down and BSE has become a global issue now. The poor handling of many politicians who have given the information policy out of their hands and left the media alone with it shows its effects. Taking Germany as an example the total BSE story could fill books with their incompetence. Instead of managing the problem

they run away from responsibilities as fast as they can leaving the public and the industry alone with the damage they caused over the years. The kill: The kill slowed down, but the slaughter of males remains high at about 50 % above normal. The slaughter of females remains very low at abt. 70 % down from normal. In total we would reckon abt. 80 % of a normal January week. What do we expect? Following the good demand prices for bulls will stay steady or advance a bit. Cows should stay under pressure until overseas customers realize that there will be very few cured hides left for them over the next months. This should bring quite a few buyers back, but we expect another correction before.