Farmers begin culling pigs as Britain’s labour shortage, exacerbated by Brexit, hits food processing plants

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First it was a lack of truck drivers that crippled gas stations. Now Britain is facing a shortage of food processing workers that’s become so severe farmers have started culling 120,000 pigs.

“Farmers are desperate,” said Sophie Hope, who manages a farm in Gloucestershire in southwest England that sells around 10,000 pigs annually. The backlog of pigs in her area has become so critical that many farmers have already been forced to kill some piglets. “It’s something that absolutely none of us want to do but it’s getting to the point where we’re not sure what else we can do,” she said. “What’s most worrying is there doesn’t seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Labour shortages in both sectors have been building since the start of the pandemic and the problem has been exacerbated by Britain’s departure from the European Union. The United Kingdom cut its last remaining ties to the EU on Jan. 1, 2021, and ended the free movement of people between the U.K. and the bloc. As a result, tens of thousands of EU nationals headed home.

The Road Haulage Association has estimated that prior to the pandemic Britain relied on 60,000 drivers from the EU, or roughly 10 per cent of the work force. The RHA says most of those drivers left after Jan. 1 and the country now has a shortage of 100,000 drivers overall.

The National Pig Association has calculated that pork-processing plants lost roughly 15 per cent of their workers after Brexit. “There was a number of EU workers who went home for Christmas that didn’t come back and others who have gone since,” said Rebecca Veale, a senior policy adviser at the NPA. “We’ve lost thousands of butchers in this country. It’s having a massive impact.”

The lack of truck drivers has caused a widespread shortage of gasoline and forced thousands of filling stations to either close or restrict how much customers can purchase. On Monday, around 200 soldiers began driving tanker trucks to help ease the supply crunch.

There were indications on Monday that the pressure has eased. The Petrol Retailers Association said that most of the problems have been confined to London and the southeastern part of England. Roughly 22 per cent of gas stations in those areas were without fuel on Monday, the PRA said. That compared with around 8 per cent across the rest of the country.

The food-worker shortage has forced abattoirs to turn back pigs that would normally be headed for slaughter. That has left farmers struggling to feed and house excess animals who will soon become too large to sell. The backlog of pigs has swelled to 120,000 and the only option is a national cull, according to Ms. Veale. “I actually spoke to a farmer this morning who had a cry because he doesn’t know what to do,” she said.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has introduced several measures to try to address the trucking problem, including three-month visas to immediately bring in 5,000 drivers. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has also written to one million retired drivers and those who have left the industry, and urged them to return.

However, Mr. Johnson has rejected calls for a temporary visa for the pork industry and on Sunday he played down the build up of pigs on farms. “If I may say so, the great hecatomb of pigs that you describe has not yet actually taken place,” he told the BBC referring to an ancient Greek sacrifice. “Let’s see what happens.”

He also partly blamed companies for the labour challenges and said industry had relied on cheap workers from the EU for too long. “What we can’t do … in all these sectors is simply go back to the tired, failed old model, reach for the lever called ‘uncontrolled immigration,’ get people in at low wages,” he said. “And yes, there will be a period of adjustment, but that is, I think, what we need to see in this country.”

His comments infuriated farmers and business groups. “I’ve never seen such willful disregard and disrespect in my life,” NPA chief executive Zoe Davies said on Twitter on Sunday. “You should be ashamed @BorisJohnson. This is your mess. Time to fix it.”

Ms. Hope said there has been substantial improvements to wages and working conditions in processing plants but finding British workers has been next to impossible. “British people don’t want to work in processing plants anymore,” she said. “I don’t think it’s as simple as just paying a little bit more money. People don’t want to do it and the labour isn’t there because there’s competition from other jobs.”

The RHA has also called Mr. Johnson’s proposed solutions short-sighted. The association has said it’s unlikely EU drivers will come to the U.K. for just three months. “Visas should be issued for a year to be attractive to lorry drivers to relocate and drive U.K. trucks,” said Paul Mummery, a spokesman for the association.

Staff shortages have started affecting other industries as well. A survey of 500 mid-sized British companies by accounting firm BDO LLP found that 26 per cent were having trouble operating at normal levels because of a shortage of labour and supplies. A little more than one-third said they’d already reduced their product lines and services, and 30 per cent planned to do so this month.

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