Pig farmers in Britain were approaching the point of desperation in the middle of December, as factories simply didn’t have the staff to process the pigs coming forward from farms.

Events in the later part of 2021 conspired to create the perfect storm, with the consequences most felt by pig finishers in Britain.

Markets were weak with the collapse in demand from China, which meant weak prices globally, given the fact that China has been an importer of 5m tonnes of pigmeat over the last couple of years.

However, pig farmers have become accustomed to volatile markets and while it would hurt, they could probably cope with the prices.

Welfare crisis

What they cannot cope with is a build-up of pigs that are factory-ready on farms. Aside from the financial cost of feed and the devaluation of carcases as they go overweight, a welfare problem quickly arises.

This has led to an on-farm cull of tens of thousands of pigs for which no value is realised and the perfectly good pigmeat is rendered lost to the food chain.

The core of the problem is that pig processing factories cannot attract enough butchers to sustain throughput at the level necessary to accommodate pigs coming off farm.

A plan was cobbled together to grant temporary visas for 800 butchers during the autumn, but a negligible number have been attracted from outside the UK.

Brexit is only part of the problem

It would be an oversimplification to blame this all on Brexit, but it is a contributor.

So long as the UK was part of the single market, people could move freely and take up employment anywhere within any of the member countries.

However, a key element of the case for Brexit was ending this and tighter control of people entering the UK, including an English language requirement for entrants. This has effectively excluded many Europeans that would have previously taken jobs in meat factories.

This population was cyclical, in that people often travelled to the UK or Ireland, earned some money and returned to their home countries where money tended to go further, to set up a permanent home.

They would then in turn be replaced by a new population of migrant workers, but these can no longer freely enter the UK.

No quick fix

The era of cheap migrant labour from countries that joined the EU last was drawing to a close as living standards and employment opportunities levelled up across member states over time.

Irish factories also struggle to attract staff even as part of the free movement area, but the problem isn’t just as bad as it is in the UK. Unfortunately for British pig producers, there is no quick fix and any solution will be longer term. This will no doubt involve greater investment in technology and automation of the factory process and significantly higher wages to attract workers.

In the meantime, parliamentarians with an understanding of agriculture, such as the chair of the EFRA (agriculture) committee, are lobbying their colleagues hard to relax the rules.

The problem is that even with relaxed rules, there is no queue of people waiting for the opportunity to work as butchers in a meat factory, as Irish factories can confirm. Staffing for factories is a problem that Brexit just makes worse.