BBC News Online: UK

Export ban creates glut of pigs

But many other pig farmers face a different dilemma: what can they do with the hundreds of pigs now building up on their farms?

The full extent of the pig crisis is - only now - becoming apparent, says one Norfolk pig farmer.

Neville Kemp said the glut of pigs was beginning to cause serious problems for farmers.

He said he now has 1,000 pigs, each weighing about 100 kilograms, to feed and house on his small farm in East Harling.

Last week he should have "shifted" 280, but he also has this week's quota and now next week's as an additional burden.

"The extra tonnage of pig meat sitting on our farms has to be looked after, fed, cared for.

"Then vet and electricity costs, labour and so on - not to mention the housing problem," Mr Kemp told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

He said while the costs to farmer was increasing, the value of their pigs was decreasing and the processors were "no nearer to being able to take them".

"The pigs that are on farms - that are sitting there having grown too big for the system and too big for the processors - need to be shifted," he said.

"It's a massive problem if you consider that I've got about 100 tonnes of pigs sitting there on the hoof and I'm a small farmer and this is multiplied throughout the whole of East Anglia."