Assured pigs can be fed swill

2 March 2001



Assured pigs can be fed swill

By Alistair Driver

A LEADING farm assurance scheme allows its farmers to rear their pigs on the feed widely blamed for the foot-and-mouth outbreak.

Calls to outlaw swill feed – which can legally contain pigmeat – have grown since the highly-contagious disease engulfed the country.

Bobby and Ronnie Waugh, whose unit at Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland, is the suspected source of the outbreak, fed their stock swill

Just 140 farmers are licensed by MAFF to feed swill, usually catering waste. They must heat it to 100°C for six hours and are subject to regular inspection.

Twenty-five of these are members of Assured British Pigs (ABP), which has over 2500 members in all.

Their meat can carry the British Quality Standard Mark for pigmeat and the National Farmers Union tractor logo.

ABP scheme manager Marcus Wood said: “It is at least theoretically possible for pork from a caterer to be fed to pigs.”

The ABP board is likely to ban swill feeders from the scheme in March after the Food Standards Agency said no mammal should be fed to another of the same species.

But a ban may be too late to prevent the credibility of farm assurance schemes being damaged.

Dick Lindley, Wakefield NFU vice-chairman and arch-opponent of farm assurance, said: “It just shows farm assurance schemes are a load of old cobblers. They cost a lot of money and prove nothing.”

British Pig Executive manager Mick Sloyan said swill feeders had been allowed in the scheme as the practice was historically a legitimate activity.

He said swill feeding could not be compared to feeding meat and bonemeal, and that the scheme ensures abattoirs know they are buying swill-reared pigmeat.

National Pig Association producer group chairman Stewart Houston said it is time consider a ban.

But he said no decision should be taken until more is known about the role of swill feeding in infecting the Waughs farm.

Other pigs farmers contacting the National Pig Association website were less patient.

East Anglian producer Paul Day said: “The one thing Nick Brown could do now is ban swill feeding. This is more dangerous than meat and bonemeal.”

Meanwhile, the Army has denied that food waste from its Albemarle Barracks in Northumberland was responsible for the outbreak at the Waughs farm.

Local farmers have alleged that swill including meat from South American and Australasian countries, sparked the outbreak.