The UK government has today (Thursday, April 6) committed to regulating written pig contracts.
The new regulations, announced by Farming Minister Mark Spencer, aim to bring stability and security to the pig supply chain and strengthen the sector’s ability to deal with current challenges like rising costs and labour shortages.
“The pig sector has faced unprecedented challenges over the last year, with rising costs and global labour shortages putting real pressure on producers and processors,” Spencer said.
“We are committed to working with the sector, and the regulations set to be introduced will ensure fairness and transparency across the supply chain – from pig to pork to plate – to help the sector to thrive in the future.”
As well as regulation on written contracts, the government said it will also develop regulations to collect and share more supply chain data, particularly in relation to wholesale price transparency and national slaughter numbers.
The government said increasing the availability of this sort of data within the supply chain will help market reporting services be more reflective of the UK market and will help reduce ambiguity in the sector.
Pig contracts
This announcement follows a public consultation on contractual practice in the UK pig sector last year, which received nearly 400 responses from producers, processors and others in the supply chain.
The consultation revealed that many in the sector valued a move that would legally require written contracts to remove uncertainty and ambiguity, with the majority of respondents supporting the government’s approach to implement this through legislation.
The consultation revealed that 64% of respondents either disagreed or strongly disagreed when presented with the prompt: “My sale agreements are always honoured.”
Almost half of responses indicated that processors do not honour contracted numbers and regularly “roll” pigs, meaning they are subject to short-notice collection changes or delays.
74% of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that legislation, rather than a voluntary approach, was needed to ensure the consistency of sale agreements across the supply chain.
