A furious Neil Parish laid into Kevin Foster, the immigration minister, for ignoring a recommendation to make it easier to bring in EU butchers and other workers – leading to a huge shortage.

"These are animals that they have reared, fed, looked after, cared for. To actually then kill something that's perfectly healthy to then go in the bin - it's just criminal," the head of the National Pig Association told Sky News.

The British meat industry is warning that hundreds of thousands of pigs may have to be culled within weeks unless the government issues more visas to allow slaughterers into the country.

The BMPA claims the UK Government has made it “doubly difficult” to recruit new butchers as a result of Brexit and a lack of funding for education courses.

Labour shortages and price rises triggered by Brexit and the pandemic could leave the British food and farming industry permanently damaged, MPs have warned.

The former prime minister’s hollow catchphrase captured a fundamental truth—just not the one she thought it did.

Many Brits will be forced to go without a Christmas turkey this year because of Brexit labour shortages, MPs were told this afternoon.

Government ‘are standing by and watching this happen’, a leading supplier said.

Crops left unharvested, healthy pigs culled and increased costs which will ultimately have to be swallowed by the consumer. Not going well, is it?

Leading figures in the livestock industry say that the animals face being killed and burned because Priti Patel has failed to include the butchers on a list of shortage occupations.

The National Pig Association has said that healthy animals are being destroyed following the exodus of EU workers as there are not enough people employed in slaughterhouses.

An estimated 200,000 pigs are backed up on farms because of a lack of skilled butchers to process them, while 40,000 animals have already been culled and their meat thrown away, farmers said this morning.

Butchers, bricklayers and welders are in such short supply that UK employers should be able to recruit them from abroad when EU freedom of movement rules end, government advisers say.

A SCOTTISH firm has revealed how it was forced to abandon all trade with Europe after Brexit hammered the “nail into the coffin” of its export business.

Vets working to tackle pigs’ overcrowding in farms have said Prime Minister Boris Johnson is not taking the abattoir labour shortage seriously, and soon ‘mass culling’ would be the only option left to farmers.

Great Britain’s beef producers export to Ireland before reimporting, while pork processors consider the Netherlands.

British cattle farmers are sending supplies to Ireland to be carved into cuts, according to the chief executive of the British Meat Processors Association (BMPA), before being brought back to the UK for consumption.

Could take ‘decades’ to shift away from reliance on overseas staff, say food sector leaders attending Downing Street summit.

A pig farmer from Suffolk is set to quit his profession after more than two decades, saying that the shortage of butchers which may lead to a mass cull of pigs is the final straw.

A pig farmer who has been losing around £5,000 a week since Christmas has called for more government support for the industry.

Pig farmers are in a “desperate” position – with culls of thousands of healthy animals and producers quitting the industry, they warned as a summit was held on the crisis.

Abattoirs, butchers and meat processors are set to employ prisoners and ex-inmates to help plug labour shortages.

"Historically we’ve relied on the availability of skilled migrant workers from the EU," he said. "That has been extremely difficult. But we’ve filled that labour gap from the Philippines."

Minister under fire for rejecting moves to bring in EU farm workers – as vegetable planting plunges 25%.

Corrine Bentham, Senior Associate at Eversheds Sutherland, comments on labour and recruitment data obtained by the law firm through and freedom of information request.

Pig farmers are warning of a crisis that threatens a mass exodus from an industry facing a skills shortage as well as huge increases in costs of feed and energy.

Recruitment gap hitting hotels and restaurants as well as transport, CBI says.

Critical industry leaders have accused Home Secretary Suella Braverman of being disconnected from the realities facing short staffed sectors after she claimed that there is "no good reason" why more British people can't be trained to take up jobs as butchers and fruit pickers.

Pig farmers are in a “desperate” position – with culls of thousands of healthy animals and producers quitting the industry, they warned as a summit was held on the crisis.

Every farmers' worst nightmare is coming to pass; the mass culling of healthy animals because there simply aren't enough butchers to process them and get them off farms... So how did we get here?

It has been a gloomy week on the sunlit uplands of sovereign Britain, as the smell of rotting and burning produce hits the nostrils of all. Or not quite...

Thousands of pig farmers say they are in ‘a living hell’ as a perfect storm of supply chain delays caused by COVID and a shortage of butchers has pushing their industry to the edge.

The National Pig Association is calling for urgent action ahead of an emergency summit with the Government.

Staff shortages see carcasses exported for processing and then reimported.

In the latest reversal of post-Brexit immigration policy, the UK government is to offer 800 temporary visas to foreign butchers in a bid to counter a spiralling crisis on pig farms.

Farmers dressed in pig costumes have protested outside the Conservative Party conference amid warnings that more than 100,000 pigs could be culled.