LONDON LETTER:THREE YEARS ago, it was so different. Pig farmers in Britain enjoyed good prices, leading to spending on new sheds and equipment. Since then, feed prices have risen inexorably, putting most, if not all, in the red for more than two years.
Now, struggling farmers are taking the knife – literally – to their breeding herds. In July, 26,000 sows and boars were culled in England and Wales – 7,000 more than in June. Between now and Christmas, 10 per cent of British pig farmers may go out of business.
If life since 2010 has been difficult, the situation since June has been catastrophic. Wheat and soya prices rose by a quarter – fuelled by a drought in the United States and heavy rainfall elsewhere, including Britain.
Last month three farms went out of business within a few days. “This means a weekly loss of 63,000 rashers of British bacon, 95,000 sausages and 10,000 pork pies – just from these three farms,” said the National Pig Association.
“Some have got only a few weeks left before they run out of credit at the bank and have to sell up, and this is happening all over Europe,” said the association’s chairman and Yorkshire pig farmer Richard Longthorp.
Predictably, supermarkets and the British public’s demand for cheap food are partly blamed. “Pork has always been the affordable meat. It’s half the price of beef and lamb. We urgently need the retail price to go up by a modest amount,” he said.
Farmers are suffering losses of £18 per pig “with not a sign of recouping their losses in the foreseeable future, while everyone else downstream in the chain continue to pay a less than realistic price”, he said.
The public has a choice, he believes: accept “a more immediate, modest but sustainable rise that would allow producers to get into profit sooner”, or face ever higher costs later because the size of the British herd will have fallen so much.
Britain’s pig herd is already a much reduced beast, having virtually halved over the last decade to about 420,000 sows. More than half the rashers sold in Britain are produced abroad, some in Ireland.
Unusually perhaps, the supermarkets have tried to help. Sainsbury’s began paying an extra 10p per kilo over the market price last month, though it will review this in October. Morrisons, meanwhile, pays a 5p premium.
Help from Sainsbury’s, however, is confined to the 22 producers on 142 farms who are members of its pork development group. “We listen to our farmers, offer them support and are committed to a sustainable pig industry in the UK,” the company said.
However, both Sainsbury’s and Morrisons – the latter headed by Irishman Dalton Philips – have not dared to pass on the costs to shoppers, fearing loss of trade. Even with the premiums, however, farmers are still losing on every sale.
Efforts to encourage the public to buy British pork have run into difficulties, though the association’s “Save Our Bacon” campaign is increasingly winning the attention of MPs, particularly those in pig-breeding districts in Suffolk and elsewhere in the east of England.
However, a TV “Pork, not porkies” ad campaign, planned by the British Pig Executive, ran into trouble with the Advertising Standards Authority after animal welfare campaigners complained claims that pigs enjoyed “high welfare” do not stand up.
Farmers argued that the claim was an implied comparison with imported pork – which they have long insisted is not produced to the standards they have to meet – but that they could put it more bluntly without falling foul of EU rules.
The Advertising Standards Authority accepted that pig welfare in the UK was high by comparison, but it noted that the use of farrowing crates, tail-docking and tooth clipping, though better than in some other EU states, remained contentious issues.
The industry crisis is not without unexpected irony. Current market prices – £1.50 a kilo – are not good enough for farmers to survive, but they are good enough for them to consider getting out of the business completely.
“The key thing this time round, and it’s quite ironic, is that the pig price per se is at a traditional high. What that means is that people can afford to get out of pigs now,” Mr Longthorp told journalists this week.
The difficulties are not confined to intensive producers. Smaller operations, rearing Gloucestershire Old Spots and other rare British breeds, are feeling pain, too, such as the Blythburgh free-range farm in Suffolk.
Owner Alastair Butler looks back nostalgically, like others, to 2009, when he happily dished up pork chops cooked in cider and caramelised apples to TV chefs, the Hairy Bikers, when they came to film for their food tour of Britain series.
“All was at peace in the world of pigs,” he recalled. “Our costs have been hit harder than most. Our extensive rearing system allows the pigs to grow more slowly and live longer, but as a consequence they eat more food.”
