20/11/21 - Farming Today This Week: Pig backlog, chicken cull, polluted oysters and deer management

Farming Today

• Episode: 20/11/21 - Farming Today This Week: Pig backlog, chicken cull, polluted oysters and deer management
• Website: Farming Today
• Feed URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj8q/episodes/downloads.rss
• Duration: 00:25:05
• Published: 2021-11-20 08:00

The problems in the pig sector have not gone away. As we've been reporting for months now, a shortage of butchers has meant abattoirs are processing fewer animals, and pigs have been backing up on farms. Where numbers get too high, these pigs have to be culled on farm for welfare reasons - with the meat NOT getting into the food chain. So far, 14,000 pigs have been culled, and we've heard reports that some farmers are considering aborting piglets rather than having to cull them once they’ve been born. To try and tackle this problem, the Government released 800 temporary visas for foreign butchers as well as a scheme to freeze and store extra pig meat - which opened this week. The idea is that pigs can be slaughtered and then cut into basic joints and frozen… with the Government picking up the bill for the storage. We find out how the scheme is working. We also visit an egg producer to find out how the supermarket pledge to stop selling caged whole eggs by 2025 is impacting his business and see how a "social croft" can be a viable way of making money on a small patch of land. Presented by Caz Graham Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Heather Simons