Britain | Porking up

Why Brexit has left British pig-farmers mired

Britain and Europe are Jack Sprat and his wife

Porking up
|Bungay, suffolk

SIMON WATCHORN, a pig farmer in Suffolk, is struggling with his teeming stock. “When you’ve got pregnant sows, you can’t just pop a cork up there and ask them to wait a fortnight.” Brexit and problems with China have left almost 100,000 hogs that should have gone for the chop wallowing on British farms.

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Where pork is concerned, Britons are Jack Sprat and continental Europeans are his wife. Brits like loins, legs and back. Europeans want fattier parts—belly and shoulders—for their salami, saucisson and bratwurst and prefer streaky to back bacon. That’s why Britain kills 10m hogs each year, but eats 23m loins, 19m hams and only 5m bellies. The so-called fifth quarter of British pigs—heads, tongues, trotters, offal and tails—mostly goes to China. (Britons also do not like sows, which have tougher meat; Europeans are fine with them.)

This mutually beneficial trade has collapsed. Towards the end of 2020, outbreaks of covid-19 in several processing plants meant their output was banned from China. Whereas Danish and Dutch exporters, similarly hit, have quickly regained their Chinese certification, British firms have been left waiting. Pig producers blame Britain’s vocal opposition to China’s treatment of Uyghurs.

Then Brexit hit. While European producers have been given a grace period till April 1st before they face border checks when exporting to Britain, British producers have to fill in export health certificates in duplicate, in the language of every country the cargo passes through. They have to be signed off by a vet at every step. The amount of paperwork is “eye-watering”, says Zoe Davies from the National Pig Association. At the worst point, exports were delayed by a week, she says. Some carcasses arrived in Europe so late that they were already spoilt and thus rejected.

Growing porkier by the day, Mr Watchorn’s pigs are up to 20 kilos overweight and looking “pretty chunky”, he says. As they get fatter, their value drops, while the cost of keeping them is rising. Straw and feed prices have soared after a poor harvest. Last year pork producers were making up to £18 a pig. Now, with pork prices down by 12% in a year, some are losing nearly £30 a pig.

Some of these problems will pass. Export permissions to China will eventually return. Delays in exporting to Europe are already down to a day or two, says Ms Baker. After April 1st, European imports will slow and the field may look more even. But paperwork increases costs, and rules of origin mean that, whereas before Brexit, British meat could be mixed with German or Dutch produce and labelled “European”, now it has to be processed and labelled separately. British producers fear that European processors may turn to local suppliers.

Either British producers will have to find new markets, or Britons will have to change their tastes and start eating the fatty bits, or pork prices will rise and the British pig industry shrink. “Try as a I might,” says Mr Watchorn, “I can’t produce a pig that has four hams.”

For more coverage of matters relating to Brexit, visit our Brexit hub

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "This little piggy didn’t go to market"

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