This study was conducted to characterize pork and pork products marketing and challenges in Ethiopia. Multi-stage random sampling procedure was applied to select a total of 40 pork retailers from six towns. Structured questionnaire was used for face to face interview to collect information. Pork retailers were clustered into three categories as small, medium and large scale based on quantities of pork they sell per day. Collected data were analyzed using appropriate statistical procedures of SAS and SPSS software packages. The result indicated that the quantity of pork products sold per day was too small. About 61.5, 15.4 and 23.1% of the interviewed pork retailers were selling <5, 5-10 and >10 kg of pork products per day and representing small, medium and large scale retailers’ category, respectively. In most cases, pork was sold in the form of mortadella, sausage and salami. In addition to pork, almost all of the pork retailers were selling one or more other meat types such as beef, mutton, goat meat, fish and chicken. About 92.3% of the pork retailers were selling both beef and chicken meat, and 79.5, 48.7 and 10.3% of them were selling fish, mutton, and goat meat, respectively. The average price (followed by SE) of a kilo gram of pork was 162 (6.3), 164 (4.0) and 172 (6.0) Birr (Ethiopian currency) ranging from 7.5 to 8 USD per kg in small, medium and large scale pork retailers category, respectively. The presence of few pork consumers, lack of formal central markets and public complain against pork consumption were the major challenges observed in pork marketing value chain in the country. Findings from this study will improve awareness on existing pork marketing systems in Ethiopia and provide valuable information for developing strategy to improve the value chain.
Keywords: Ethiopian pork marketing, form of pork product, pork price, pork source, volume of supply