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Healthy pigs culled due to UK slaughter backlog
The severe labor shortage is becoming an increasingly pressing problem for the UK pig sector. The slaughter backlog is now estimated at more than 170.000 pigs. Tens of thousands of healthy pigs are culled by desperate entrepreneurs who have run out of space. That is why interest groups National Pig Association (NPA) and National Farmers' Union (NFU) are sounding the alarm (again) at the British Ministry of Agriculture Defra.
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The NPA and NFU have written to Defra Secretary George Eustice calling on him to convene an emergency supply chain summit to find solutions to 'the ongoing and escalating crisis in the pig sector'.
For years £25 loss per pig
NPA calculates that this situation, together with record pig feed costs and falling pig prices, has meant that farmers have been losing around £25 (€32) per pig for almost a year now. In the letter to Agriculture Minister George Eustice, the interest groups write that it is completely unacceptable that 'processors continue to purchase overweight pigs that they have had produced by farmers at enormously reduced prices'.
According to NPA, on average 30% of the contracted pigs are not taken by processors, with peaks of 50%. This has been the case since last summer and if nothing happens, the situation will last until at least June, according to NPA. The average carcass weight is now above 95 kilos, almost 9 kilos heavier than two years ago.
Number of sows decreased by 10%
Farmers, veterinarians and livestock keepers have told the NPA that more than 35.000 healthy pigs have been culled and disposed of since September as a result of the backlog. The NPA suspects that the actual number is much higher. The letter also states that the number of sows has shrunk by at least 30.000 over the past year, approximately 10%, and forty pig farms have ceased production.
In October, the British government responded to the calls of interest groups to grant visas to 800 foreign slaughter workers which would allow them to work in the United Kingdom for at least six months. Meat processors could also store slaughtered but unprocessed pig carcasses for a period of three to six months. According to the NPA, only 105 butchers have taken advantage of such a visa and only three applications have been made for private storage.
'From farm to plate'
The NPA and NFU are now asking the minister to organize a summit for the entire pig sector to draw up a plan on how to get pigs 'from the farms to the plates of the consumer'. If nothing changes, the organizations fear "a mass exodus from this industry over the next XNUMX months."