The National Pig Association has put a comprehensive support package to Defra as the British pig sector faces its second market crisis in four years. Defra minister Stephen Morgan asked the NPA in July to draw up detailed proposals after meeting the association about the turmoil in the market; the package combines short-term financial aid with longer-term measures for stability.

Within the past year many independent producers have been given notice on all or part of their pig supply contracts — nearly half of the respondents to an NPA survey of independent members in July said they had been served notice — and those forced to sell on the spot market are receiving exceptionally low prices, in some cases losing about £50 a pig and haemorrhaging money every week.

The NPA is asking for a pig price top-up scheme like the Scottish Government's £2 million package announced in July, paying producers who have had to sell on the spot market an amount reflecting the gap to the cost of production; a restructuring scheme to help producers who have no option but to close all or part of their business; and, because most six-month notice periods run out from October, leaving perhaps 12,000 pigs a week on farms with no contract and no market, a government-funded private storage aid scheme for pigmeat with a slaughter incentive payment until supply tightens, demand improves or the meat can be exported, probably outside the EU.

Longer-term asks include compulsory market monitoring under the Agriculture Act to forecast the breeding herd and piglets born, as already happens in poultry; an industry code of conduct alongside the fair-dealing (FDOP) regulations to address behaviour that independent producers regard as manipulative; transparency and country-of-origin rules for foodservice, which uses far more imported pigmeat than retail; reform of government buying standards to favour British products; and the NFU's proposed core standards for both domestic and imported food.

'The pig sector is going through another hugely turbulent period, just four years after the last crisis, and we face losing more producers and more of our critical mass if things continue as they are,' said NPA chief executive Lizzie Wilson, urging ministers to give the proposals full consideration.

Source: Pig World