The slaughter of healthy pigs has begun on British farms, with farmers forced to kill animals to make space and ensure the continued welfare of their livestock, reports stated on Tuesday (5), amid an ongoing shortage of workers at slaughterhouses.
About 600 pigs have been killed at farms across the country, according to Zoe Davies, the chief executive of the National Pigs Association, who said that culling had begun at a “handful” of farms.
“We have moved to stage two,” Davies said. “Stage one was contingency planning and putting pigs in temporary accommodation. Stage two, we have not got any more space and pigs are growing, there are more on farms that we can manage.
“You either stop mating sows, which some farmers are doing, or you thin out pigs so the welfare of those on the farm isn’t negatively impacted. We shouldn’t have to be here and we shouldn’t be doing this at all,” Davies said.
Meanwhile, prime minister Boris Johnson sparked industry fury by saying the pigs would have died anyway and become “bacon sandwiches”.
“I was on the BBC the other day with a guy who was complaining that the pigs were going to be slaughtered, that 100,000 pigs were going to die. I’m afraid they’re eaten very often in this country – I don’t know, do you have a bacon sandwich?,” Johnson told Times Radio.
Claiming that shortfall of labour had led to an “absolute travesty” of healthy animals going to waste with no benefit to the economy or food chain, industry leaders have accused Johnson of a lack of respect to farmers.
“The feedback we’re getting from our members very loud and clearly is there seems to be no empathy at all,” Tom Bradshaw, vice-president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), told Times Radio.
“And it’s just a lack of respect for what is going on out there. I’m afraid the cull has started today,” he said, calling it “a tragic waste of food, which has never happened before”.
Pig farmers have been warning for several weeks that labour shortages at abattoirs have led to a backlog of as many as 120,000 pigs left stranded on farms long after they should have gone to slaughter.
Animals ready for slaughter but stuck on farms require feeding and housing, causing financial difficulties for farmers. Meanwhile, large pigs which are overdue for slaughter often grow by about 1kg a day, becoming too large for slaughterhouses.
The meat industry is one of many sectors of the UK economy that is reportedly grappling with labour shortages linked to Brexit and the pandemic. Farmers are insistent that low wages are not the reason that meat processing plants are struggling to fill their vacancies.
“We are still being represented as a low-pay industry, and we need to put the record straight,” said Bradshaw, adding that meat processing plants are offering wages of up to £18 an hour, but are still unable to attract enough workers.
Britain’s food and drink industry has previously called on the government to introduce a “Covid-19 recovery visa” to recruit overseas workers to temporarily ease disruption in the food supply chain.
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