The National Pig Association wants butchers in East London and around the country to stock British instead of imported pork. On its website the association warns consumers that while they eat cheap EU pork, British pigs are being killed before they even leave the farm, because of a lack of abattoir workers.
Last week it was reported that farmers had already culled over 600 pigs and that this this was just the start. National Farmers Union (NFU) president Minette Batters warned that around 150,000 pigs are currently stranded on farms because of a backlog of animals waiting to be slaughtered. Farmers are stuck with livestock that they have to either keep on feeding or put down. After a month of high food costs and falling pork prices, they face financial ruin and see no solution other than slaughter.
One of the reasons for the crisis is a shortage of 15,000 East European slaughterhouse workers, who left the UK during COVID and can’t return due to Brexit immigration rules and the constantly-changing Covid 19 travel restrictions.
Abattoirs are working at 20% below capacity and are unable to take in as many pigs as usual, resulting in overcrowded farms. The pigs that farmers are forced to cull will either be sent to rendering plants or even landfill, as the meat cannot be approved for human consumption when the pigs have died on the farm.
Farmers are requesting temporary visas to allow skilled butchers to enter the UK to work in the slaughterhouses. But Boris Johnson told interviewer Andrew Marr that pigs “die anyway” and that he did not want a return to “uncontrolled immigration.” He also blamed abattoirs for not creating attractive working conditions.
Speaking to Rising East, Cambridge-based farm management specialist Carl Atkin-House said that the slaughter of pigs on farms was scandalous but not yet widespread.
He also ridiculed the prime minister for comparing the killing of an animal so that it enters the food supply chain to killing it for no good reason. “The Prime Minister’s point is clearly nonsense,” he said.
But he did support the PM’s wish to avoid immigration-related cheap labour. “To get us through the crisis, we need a short-term visa regime to get more workers in,” he said. “But we can’t keep importing more and more immigrant labour to do low-skill jobs.”
Picture by Maxi Pfeiffer