Supply crisis: Overseas butchers and abattoir workers to be granted six-month seasonal worker visas to deal with pig backlog

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Butchers and abattoir workers from overseas will be granted seasonal worker visas to deal with the backlog of pigs that need to be slaughtered, the government has announced.

Agriculture Secretary George Eustice said about 800 pig butchers from overseas are needed to avoid a mass cull of up to 150,000 of the animals.

He expects to see the butchers arriving in November and they will be eligible to apply for six-month visas from the existing allocation in the Seasonal Workers Pilot Scheme up until 31 December.

It will only be temporary and is in addition to foreign butchers already being eligible, since December 2020, to apply to come to the UK through the existing skilled worker route.

Mr Eustice also announced that abattoirs will be offered private storage aid (PSA) so they can temporarily store pork before going to market to clear the backlog.

PSA is a taxpayer-funded market intervention scheme that unlocks funding for slaughtered pigs to be held in private cold stores.

The government is also changing the rules around cabotage – the loading and unloading of goods in one country – for EU truck drivers in the UK so they can do as many trips as they like in a two-week period.

However, Mr Eustice said the requirement for butchers to be fluent in English will not be dropped, as was expected.

The National Pig Association (NPA), which represents the majority of farmers affected, welcomed the intervention although it had said the requirement for butchers to speak English was “the final blocker”.