COMMENT
A crisis not of our making Brian Chester reports
A
s this 2022 edition of the Pig Guide went to the printer the British pig industry continued to face many challenges. Sustained protests to an apparently uninterested government – while the build up of market-ready pigs on the farm increased with producers in despair as they began to cull top quality, healthy stock and see the carcasses go to waste – finally produced the go-ahead for temporary visas to allow processors to employ foreign nationals to tackle the backlog on UK farms. This belated action, however, cannot wipe away the previous apparent lack of interest and dismissive attitude by those in Government who the industry had looked to for help. It took persistent lobbying by the industry, face-to-face protests and wide media coverage, to make an impact. Up to that point it was as if production of pig meat in this country could be put aside and with the industry left to suffer the consequences of a disaster that was not of its making. Pig meat is easy enough to import from a dozen or more countries – while conveniently ignoring the ‘promises’ (and real consumer concern) on animal welfare and aided by the fact that proposed import checks on meat have been put back to July 2022. And whoever mentioned food security? Does the ‘lesson to be learned’ of over reliance
6 PIG GUIDE 2022
on third-party suppliers which still flickers in the flames of the gas crisis, mean nothing? For those who like to speculate on these things there could be a message here for other sectors of the UK food chain should misfortune strike. It is against this background – unprecedented since the Pig Guide was first published 26 years ago – that the 2022 edition was prepared. We are grateful to the organisations and companies which have contributed to the Guide allowing it – and its companion website www.pig-guide.com – to continue as a principal reference source during the coming year and thereafter. The effectiveness of the Government concession to allow processors to ‘import’ butchers will depend on how quickly they arrive. But the sad truth is that, whatever the outcome, it will not be a quick fix. All sectors of the industry covered in these pages will be called on to work together to ease the pain and repair the damage. This issue also contains reference to those organisations dedicated to providing help in times of crisis and need (see opposite). These contacts will be listed on the website and kept up-to-date. But questions remain: why it needed a campaign by the industry to bring those in government to their senses. This crisis did not happen over night. And what happens when the six-month permits run out given processors say they need at least 8,000 more butchers? Another backlog? Another crisis?
