UK stabbing British farmers in the back

WHEN our current prime minister was but a humble MP with aspirations, he was in touch with me on a number of occasions to discuss the ailing fortunes of the farming industry and particularly of the dairy sector.

Each time he did so he assured me that Farmers For Action’s campaigning for better prices was going about things all the wrong way and if I left it to him he would ‘sort it out’.

Obviously he has had other things to occupy him since then because the sorting-out has yet to materialise and the dairy sector – along with all others – is still in deep trouble.

However, Mr Sunak and his Government has unveiled a couple of

Christmas presents which they obviously believe will lift the mood in the industry – though which will be of particular interest to the many pig farmers in Yorkshire, where lies Mr Sunak’s own constituency.

First a deal has been done for a Polish company to build and operate a pork processing plant in Lancashire, creating plenty of jobs for locals in the process.

Good news all round then? Well, not exactly. Because the pork that will be being processed will be Polish pork. A bit of a disappointment, then.

Never mind, here’s news of another significant inward investment in the UK: Danish company Danish

Crown is sinking no less than £100 million into setting up a plant in Rochdale to produce 900 tons of bacon and gammon a week.

With 300 jobs promised surely this, then, is going to gladden the hearts of local pig producers. Well not quite. Because – yes, you’ve guessed – the pigs providing the raw materials will, the company says, ‘be raised to UK standards’ – in other words they will be Danish.

It is hard to conceive of a more audacious way of stabbing British farmers in the back. Both Denmark and Poland still use sow stalls which are banned here and almost certainly operate under a far lighter (and therefore less costly) regulatory burden than that which successive UK governments have seen fit to construct for our farmers.

And will anyone, I wonder, be travelling to Poland – a country which, I need not remind you, enjoys something of a reputation for observing pretty poor, not to say shocking farm welfare standards – to ensure that the animals destined for the UK will be produced in similar conditions to those required on all British pig units? Somehow I doubt it. And even if they did, even if they discovered animals being raised in the most appalling circumstances, what could they do about it?

There would surely have been opportunities when the deals to establish these two plants were being done to build in a stipulation that at least a percentage of the throughput should come from British farms.

But no, in the rush to chalk up at least two positive economic achievements among the smoking shambles the country has been reduced to, noone in government considered its own pig industry worth a second thought.

Both Denmark and Poland still use sow stalls which are banned here