United Kingdom-Saving the pig farmers.

UNITED KINGDOM- EVERYONE CLIMBING ON THE PIGS BACK.

Farmer Peter Greig has teamed up with TV chef Jamie Oliver and actress Joanna Lumley for a TV show which focuses on the problems facing the nation’s pig farmers.

Award-winning meat producer Mr Greig, 51, who runs Pipers Farm at Cullompton and has a shop in St Leonard’s, Exete, said the pig industry was battling to combat cheap imports.

It is the second time the chairman of the Magdalen Road Traders’ Group in Exeter, has joined a Channel 4 TV special. He helped promote chicken welfare with Oliver last year.

The Jamie Saves Our Bacon show goes out next Thursday as part of the Great British Food Fight season.

During the programme, Mr Greig debates with animal welfare campaigner and vegetarian Miss Lumley the farm’s decision to castrate young male pigs.

Mr Greig said pigs at Pipers Farm were slow grown to natural maturity.

"Pigs industrially- reared for the supermarket shelves have been genetically bred to grow so fast that they reach slaughter weight before they have sexually matured," he explained.

"Our native saddleback pigs take twice as long to rear to reach the same weight.

"If we did not castrate the boars the amount of testosterone in the meat would make it taste horrible.

"I believe people watching the programme will make their own minds up about how they want their meat to be reared.

"Our pigs roam free in orchards. They are not held in enormous meat production complexes and they enjoy happy and stress-free lives, which results in fantastic-tasting meat.

"If people are eating cheap pork then they need to recognise the process is industrialised from start to finish. I’m not criticising people who want to eat this meat but I want them to be aware that they have a choice which we and other smaller scale producers provide."

He said that the survival of the UK’s pig industry was in the hands of family-run businesses. We need to look at the reality of sustaining pig production in the UK and being able to feed ourselves as a nation," he stressed.

"It is a fallacy that giant global businesses offer the most efficient or sustainable method of rearing meat."

The programme also investigates where pork is sourced.