Pigs: Livestock Industry

(asked on 13th January 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, DEFRA Press Release, Package of measures announced to support pig sector, published on 15 October 2021, what assessment his Department has made of the potential effectiveness of the measures announced on 15 October 2021 to support the pig industry; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
Victoria Prentis Portrait
Victoria Prentis
Attorney General
This question was answered on 19th January 2022

We continue to work closely with the pig industry to help them respond to a number of challenges caused by the pandemic, labour shortages and access to supplies of CO2 that have led to a growing backlog of pigs on farms.

The package of measures we announced on 15 October 2021 included temporary work visas for up to 800 pork butchers, and Private Storage Aid (PSA) and Slaughter Incentive Payment (SIP) schemes to facilitate an increase in the throughput of pigs through abattoirs. Together with Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB), we are working to identify new export markets for pork.

In addition, in England and Scotland, the two meat levy bodies, the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board and Quality Meat Scotland, suspended the statutory levy for pig farmers and producers during November 2021.

While interest in the temporary visa scheme was high, recruitment has taken longer than initially expected. Concern around the Omicron variant led to many butchers not taking up visas to travel to the UK. The time of year and the skilled nature of the role have also contributed to this delay. Details of the numbers of temporary work visas granted for pork butchers will be published in the usual way via the Home Office's quarterly immigration statistics.

There was no take up of the initial SIP Scheme and only limited uptake to date of the PSA scheme, this was because processors were already working additional shifts in the pre-Christmas period to meet their contracted requirements which limited opportunities to add extra shifts in the period and reduced the amount of pig meat that was available to enter the PSA scheme.

Once more butchers arrive, it is expected that processors will have greater capacity to access both schemes, particularly in the period January – March when demand for pig meat is typically lower.

Recognising this and the additional challenges that processors might face as a result of covid related workforce absences, the Government is extending the PSA scheme and introduced a new SIP scheme on 14 January, both of which are expected to run until 31 March 2022. We have also adapted the original SIP scheme to align it with the PSA scheme by extending eligible products to include those that have been butchered, increasing the contribution towards processors costs by an increase in the incentive payment and capping the scheme at 100,000 pigs.

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