Brown disappoints pig men
30 June 1999
Brown’ disappoints pig men
By Isabel Davies
PIG industry leaders say the governments latest response to the Agriculture Select Committee report on the UK pig industry is disappointing – but not unexpected.
Graham England, chairman of the National Farmers Union pig committee, said the government was still responding inadequately to the pig industrys needs.
“Unless someone recognises the state the industry is in, we will be exporting the pig industry as we did the veal industry,” he warned.
In his second response to the report on UK pig industry, agriculture minister Nick Brown yesterday rejected accusations that he failed to back the British pig sector.
“I refute the charge that the governments attitude towards the pig industry has been complacent,” he said.
“I and my fellow Ministers have taken a series of steps with the industry to focus on the problems which face them.”
But Grenville Welsh of the British Pig Association (BPA) also expressed said there were two important issues that had not been addressed at all.
“Greater influence could be exerted on government departments and local authorities to buy pigmeat produced to UK standards, but this is not mentioned at all.”
Mr Welsh also said that the pig industry had a “moral and legitimate” case for compensation if the ban on meat and bonemeal in animal feed continued.
Concern is mounting that the pig sector will be unable to recover from the current crisis because of the decline in breeding numbers.
The latest Meat and Livestock Commission (MLC) figures now estimate that the UKs herd size stands at just 630,000 sows – a 23% drop on 18 months ago.