British pork industry warns of massive pig cull due to labour shortages

Britain's pig farmers on Friday warned of a crisis unless the government took urgent steps to ease an acute shortage of abattoir workers and butchers that has left up to 150,000 pigs backed up on farms and facing a costly cull.

Brexit and the pandemic have combined this year to leave deep labour shortages across the British economy, with a dearth of drivers disrupting fuel and supermarket supplies.

And in the food sector, a sudden exodus of eastern European workers after COVID-19 lockdowns eased has left many pig farmers fighting for survival. On Friday they urged retailers not to turn to cheaper European Union pork.

Britain recently changed tack to allow some international workers to come in for three months to drive trucks and fill gaps in the poultry sector, but opposition Labour party leader Keir Starmer said the government wasn't moving fast enough.

"The Prime Minister should be taking emergency action today but yet again he's failed to grasp the seriousness of the crisis. If it needs legislation, then let's recall Parliament," he said.

On Thursday, Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers Union, said a cull of up to 150,000 pigs was "potentially a week, ten days away."

"I do not feel anybody can preside over a welfare cull of healthy livestock. I don't believe it has happened in the world before and it cannot happen now," she told the BBC.