British beef and pork producers are sending animal carcasses to EU to be butchered before being re-imported as they fight ongoing labour shortage
- British Meat Processors Association said beef carcasses are going to Ireland
- Will then be cut up and prepared at an additional cost of £1,500 per lorry load
- Pork farmers also expected to start shipping pig carcasses to the Netherlands
British cattle farmers are being forced to export carcasses to the EU for processing due to a shortage of butchers.
Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, said beef producers were shipping supplies to Ireland by ferry for cutting and packing before re-importing them into the UK.
This will cost around £1,500 for each lorry load when transport fees and Brexit customs requirements – such as export health certifications – are taken into account.
Pork farmers are also expected to start shipping millions of pig carcasses to the Netherlands to be prepared in a similar process. Meat produced in this way cannot be listed as British pork for UK sale.
Pork farmers are also expected to start shipping millions of pig carcasses to the Netherlands to be prepared in a similar process
The developments provide fresh evidence of the crisis facing the industry after hundreds of butchers have left the country due to the pandemic and Brexit.
‘Due to the shortage of meat workers in the UK and the limitations to recruit caused by the immigration policy, processors are taking advantage of the fact that other countries are sourcing extra labour from around the world and exporting meat to be processed and returned to this country,’ Mr Allen said.
‘Whilst it is an added cost it is a better option than empty shelves and animals building up on the farms,’ he said.
There is a 15% staff shortage across many meat plants in the UK, climbing as high as 20% in some cases, he said.
The UK beef sector needs to fill 15,000 vacancies, a majority of them skilled or semi-skilled, he added.
Last month the British government agreed to issue 800 temporary visas for butchers to work in the UK for six months, but the government has not said how many applications have been made.
More than 10,000 healthy pigs have already had to be culled due to a backlog on farms, according to the National Pig Association.
Chief executive Zoe Davies: ‘This is not excess supply, farmers have been contracted to grow these pigs, but the facilities are taking a quarter less than they agreed because they simply don’t have the butchers.
‘The Government has to help now because all the processors have tried very hard to recruit lately, wages have gone up exponentially over the last few months. The reality is that most people in the UK do not want to work in abattoirs and it doesn’t matter how much you pay them.’
Rules mean farmers can only kill their own animals for consumption on the farm, and are banned from selling the meat commercially.
Nick Allen, chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association, said beef producers were shipping supplies to Ireland by ferry for cutting and packing before re-importing them into the UK
It comes after MPs were warned supermarkets will be short of home produced fresh turkeys this Christmas with stores turning to imports from France and Poland.
The warning came from farm industry leaders, who say this is evidence of a wider crisis across the food supply chain caused by a chronic lack of workers.
The nation’s turkey farmers decided to raise fewer chicks this year because they could see the country would not have enough workers in processing plants to handle them.
Farmers’ leaders said the labour shortages are a disaster for British food production with the result that huge quantities of fresh produce and milk is going to waste.
The doomsday scenario was set out by farm industry leaders in evidence to an inquiry by MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, into the impact of labour shortages.
Chairman of the British Poultry Council, Graeme Dear, said there is a ‘likelihood’ there will be a shortage of UK-produced turkeys for Christmas. Around 20per cent fewer birds have been reared this year on British farms.
The Government recently announced that it would allow in 5,500 poultry plant workers on short-term visas, however this came too late to boost the number of turkeys being raised.
Mr Dear said: ‘We would have loved to have known about that in June, and therefore could have placed enough turkeys for a full Christmas.
‘We will do our utmost to make sure that Christmas is as normal as it can be, but there is a likelihood that there will be a shortage – had we known back in June or July that would have been fixed.
‘The irony is that we may find ourselves having to import turkey from France and Poland for a British Christmas, probably with some of the very workers we trained and left to go back to their homelands.’
Source: Read Full Article
