The government has agreed to convene an emergency summit of the entire pig supply chain as the sector's crisis deepens.
Defra farming minister Victoria Prentis today agreed to the joint National Pig Association (NPA) and NFU request for a roundtable event amid a worsening crisis.
It comes as the pig backlog is now estimated to be well in excess of 170,000 due to a lack of butchers in pork processing plants, as a result of the pandemic and Brexit.
Tens of thousands of healthy pigs have been culled on farms across the country by increasingly desperate producers who have run out of space.
NPA chairman Rob Mutimer and NFU president Minette Batters wrote to Defra last week, calling for it to "arrange a summit of the entire pig supply chain so that we can agree a plan to get these pigs off farms and onto people’s plates".
Responding, Mrs Prentis agreed that "convening a roundtable bringing together producers, processors, and retailers to discuss the ongoing challenges faced by the sector would be helpful". The date will be arranged ‘shortly’.
She acknowledged that recruitment of butchers via the temporary visa route, which closed to applications on 31 December, had ‘taken longer than initially expected’.
But she said that processors could still recruit butchers via the UK's new points-based immigration system, which was introduced last month.
The Defra minister also acknowledged that uptake of both the Private Storage Aid (PSA)and Slaughter Incentive Payment (SIP) schemes had been lower than anticipated.
But she said she believed the extensions and changes to the schemes "if taken up by the processors, will help to further reduce the current backlog of pigs on farm".
The NPA has been calling for a third industry crisis summit for some time, amid growing concern over the future of the industry as the crisis deepens, both in terms of the backlog and the dire financial situation.
Challenging market conditions, exacerbated by the backlog costs, record feed costs and falling pig prices, mean farmers have now been losing around £25 per pig for nearly a year.
Mr Mutimer welcomed Defra's announcement today: “We are pleased that Defra has finally agreed to our joint request with the NFU for a crisis summit.
“We desperately need to get everyone together, so we can explain just how serious things are on farm – many people are now utterly desperate – and to try and find urgent solutions to get things moving, and also to share the burden of all this more evenly."
He added: “The current projection is that if things don’t change, we are not going to start seriously eating into the backlog until late-spring-early summer. That, I’m afraid, will simply be too late for many pig farmers.
"This is a crisis unfolding in front of our eyes – and we must act collectively now to save the British pig industry.”
