TEMPORARY VISAS for 800 pork butchers have been announced by the UK Government after thousands of healthy pigs had to be culled on farms because there was no-one to process them into the food chain.

According to the National Pig Association, ongoing labour shortages in the red meat processing sector led to around 6600 healthy pigs being destroyed.

Making the announcement of the visas, which will be available up until the end of the year for a maximum of six months, UK Environment Secretary George Eustice said: "A unique range of pressures on the pig sector over recent months, such as the impacts of the pandemic and its effect on export markets, have led to the temporary package of measures we are announcing.

"This is the result of close working with industry to understand how we can support them through this challenging time."

The government has stressed that the visas are not a long-term solution and has urged businesses to make long term investments in the UK domestic workforce to reduce reliance on overseas labour.

Alongside the temporary visas, the government has also extended working hours for the meat industry where possible to attempt to address the backlog in livestock and introduced a ‘private storage aid scheme’ which will allow processors to store slaughtered pigs for three to six months, to be processed at a later date.

Earlier this week it was also announced that an industry 'levy holiday' would come into effect this November for a month, to help alleviate some of the costs facing the pig sector at slaughter.

Read more - Levy holiday for pig producers announced

Lincolnshire pig farmer Meryl Ward told BBC Farming Today that she has 1600 pigs backed up on her farm and is faced with the tough decision to start culling in the near future.

“The stark reality is we have to take pigs out of the system somewhere and the easiest place to take pigs out the system, the ones you have least invested in, is piglets,” she said.

“We are struggling with this as we don’t feel we could ask staff on the farm to undertake that process, we basically spend our careers caring and nurturing for pigs through their life cycle and it is completely unthinkable to then ask staff to shoot piglets at weaning. So it would come down to asking our vet and possibly our knackerman and us as owners of the business, to undertake that process.”

Responding to comments which have been directed at the pig sector – including by Prime Minister Boris Johnson – that pigs are reared to be killed anyway, and why does the current situation make it so different, Mrs Ward stressed: “We breed a pig that has a useful purpose and that gives our careers a meaningful purpose. I spend a lifetime trying to improve the health and welfare of our animals on farm, so to actually then stop the process and destroy the animal is an absolutely ludicrous waste of an absolutely healthy animal.”

Ms Ward has 1600 pigs backed up on her farm, costing her £1 a pig per day to keep. This financial cost is compounded by the fact that those 1600 pigs should amount to nearly a quarter of a million pounds in revenue, which is now not contributing to the farm income.

Addressing the initial resistance by the government to issue visas to support the sector she said: “It seems such as simple thing to issue a few visas against the absolutely horrendous possibility of an on-farm cull of healthy livestock,” and asked why poultry was prioritised several weeks ago and pigs weren’t included until now. “For a government which professes to have an interest in animal welfare, it seems completely illogical.”

The National Pig Association has welcomed the move by the UK Government to finally issue visas but stressed that the sector is still in a very difficult place: "We are so very relieved that the Government has finally released some measures aimed at reducing the significant pig backlog on farms,” said NPA chief executive Zoe Davies. "We are working with the processors to understand the impact of these new measures and to determine exactly what will happen now, and how quickly, so that we can give pig farmers some hope and stem the flow of healthy pigs currently having to be culled on farms."