Save our bacon, British

farmers exclaim as pig cull

looms
Acute shortage of butchers and abattoir workers

• National Post (National Edition)

• 2 Oct 2021

• KATE HOLTON AND JAMES DAVEY

LONDON • Britain's pig farmers on Friday warned of a pork crisis unless the
government urgently eased an acute shortage of abattoir workers and
butchers that has left up to 150,000 pigs backed up on farms and facing a
costly cull.
Brexit and the pandemic have combined this year to leave deep labour
shortages across the British economy, with a dearth of drivers disrupting
fuel and supermarket supplies.
In the food sector, a sudden exodus of eastern European workers after
COVID-19 lockdowns eased has left many pig farmers fighting for survival,
and on Friday they urged retailers not to turn to cheaper European Union
pork.
The National Pig Association said the industry was hiking wages and trying
to increase training and automation to help fix an industry that has always
struggled for labour.
In the meantime, however, farmers face an acute shortage of butchers and
slaughterers, leaving up to 150,000 pigs which should have already been
slaughtered still on farms.
The threat of a cull of pigs has evoked memories of Britain's 2001 Foot and
Mouth crisis, when some six million pigs, cattle and sheep were
slaughtered, generating images of burning animal corpses piled high in the
fields for months.
More recently farmers in the United States had to abort baby pigs and kill
other livestock when the pandemic upended the food sector's supply chains.
The U.K. association, which urged the government to ease immigration
rules for six to nine months to tide the industry over, said talks with the
government had reached an impasse.
“I'm fielding calls, day in day out, from farmers all over the country who are
in a perilous position where they have just got far, far too many pigs on
their farm,” Rob Mutimer, chairman of the association and a farmer in
Norfolk, told Reuters.
He said the industry had always known it would lose European workers after
Britain voted to leave the European Union but that the lifting of COVID-19
travel rules earlier this year prompted many, who had not been home for 18
months, to leave en masse.
“The whole food sector just cannot cope with such an enormous short-term
loss in labour,” he said.
“Yes, the industry needs to train English people and it needs to become
more automated. We know that, and it's happening. There's massive
investment going into these facilities to reduce the dependence on foreign
labour.”
Mutimer said some factories were increasing wages by 15 per cent and
looking to invest more in technology as they faced up to the fact that the
industry had relied on cheap labour for too long. For now though, they need
government support and retailers to keep buying.
Adding to the pressure, he said his farm's own food costs had gone up by 35
per cent in the last year.
“This is crucifying my finances because the food cost of feeding these extra
pigs is horrendous, cash flow of not selling enough pigs is horrendous and
on top of that pigs were in a position where they weren't making money
anyway,” he said.