July 4, 2011

 

English pig farmers express resentment at Tesco 

 

 

A group of pig farmers have pointed finger at Tesco of underpaying UK suppliers in spite of increasing prices at the till.

 

Around 70 pig farmers and supporters of the industry gathered on a picket line outside the Tesco AGM at Nottingham's East Midlands Conference Centre on Friday (Jul 1) in a battle to win a fair price on their products.

 

Richard Longthorp and his daughter, Anna, who run Kilpin Hall Farm in Howden, East Yorkshire, said a recent survey revealed a vast difference in earnings between the supermarket and farmers.

 

"They will say they pay a fair price," Longthorp said. "Now, the word 'fair' is open to interpretation.

 

"The industry commissioned some research earlier this year and that research showed that the supermarkets, Tesco being the biggest, were making on average GBP16 million (US$25.7 million) a week profit from the pork that they sell.

 

"Pig farmers, on the other hand, were losing on average GBP3 million (US$4.8 million) a week.

 

"To me that is simply a case of the pig farmers subsidising the profits of Tesco - that cannot be right."

 

The British Pig Industry Support Group, which organised the protest, said farmers are losing around GBP10 (US$16) on every pig sold due to the high costs of feed and are calling for an immediate GBX10 (US$0.16) a kilo price rise to try to help them break even.

 

The group said Tesco recently put up the price of a number of pork lines such as loin steaks from GBP8.36 (US$13.43) per kilo to GBP8.99 (US$14.44) and a Finest leg joint from GBP6.98 (US$11.21) a kilo to GBP7.99 (US$12.84), profits which were not filtering down the chain to the farmers.

 

Supporters of the protest handed out leaflets called "Scale and Responsibility" to people going into the AGM, which detailed the argument.

 

Anna said she set up her business, Anna's Happy Trotters, selling free-range pork from the family farm, in a bid to avoid large supermarkets dictating what they would pay and she now sells direct to many customers.

 

Her father said, "I believe passionately, as do all of these people here today, that with size and power should go responsibility.

 

"There are other supermarkets such as Waitrose, such as Morrisons, who use their size and scale to help the industry develop more sustainable solutions for going forward."

 

Tesco spokesman Tom Hoskin said he understood why farmers were protesting at the AGM but said the company was working with processors to ensure a fair price not only for farmers but also for customers.

 

He said, "We deal with the pork processors so we buy from them. We have recently increased the price that we pay for pork product to those processors, so this is a discussion that the pig farmers need to have with the processors.

 

"We are British agriculture, British farming's biggest customers, 70% of our fresh pork and 100% of our Finest sausages and bacon come from UK farmers.

 

"We buy as much British pork as we can and the welfare standards across the board are as high as Red Tractor, if not in excess of Red Tractor standards."

 

Hoskin said Tesco was doing all it could to support British pig farmers and added, "We are in constant contact with the National Pig Association and the British Pig Executive. These are the representative bodies across the entire industry in the UK so we work very constructively with them. We are having this dialogue all the time, we are always trying to work out a solution to problems as they emerge."

 

Longthorp, who no longer deals with Tesco processors and has switched to Waitrose, warned that if pay conditions were not made more fair, there would be a shortage and eventual stoppage of the availability of British pork because farmers would simply not be able to stay in business.

 

He said, "It saddens me but it annoys me because the solution is quite simple.

 

"When you have the major retailers making GBP16 million (US$25.7 million) a week profit out of our pigs and we are losing GBP3 million (US$4.8 million) a week, there is something, anybody can see, fundamentally wrong there.

 

"Supermarkets like Tesco need to act more responsibly and make sure that margin they are making is distributed a little more fairly."

 

Anna added, "It is soul destroying seeing farmers who have worked their whole lives just having to go out of farming. They are doing something they love and they have to give it up."