No one can deny that pig farming is in a crisis. The latest figures from the Rural Business Research Unit at Askham Bryan College illustrate the misery by revealing that income from pigs has fallen by approximately £10,000 per farm.

These gloomy findings come at the same time as a report issued jointly by the Meat and Livestock Commission, the National Pig Association and the British Pig Executive. This warns that the Government's refusal to offer emergency cash to producers will only make worse what is already the most serious crisis in the pig sector for more than 50 years.

According to this report, pig farmers in Britain are losing £4 million a week - while job losses, already put at 25,000, could reach nearly 50,000 if nothing is done.

The crisis in pig farming is blamed on a number of factors, including a world-wide glut of pork and bacon, the strong value of sterling, and the high production costs faced by British farmers, who complain that tight animal welfare controls push up costs and help make their meat too expensive. Other EU producers, the farmers complain, are not shackled by such strict health rules.

The difficulty of the situation is starkly illustrated today by pig farmer Chris England, of Holtby, near York, who argues that pig farmers have lost as much in the past 18 months as they made in the previous 18 years.

Mr England believes there is no future for specialist pig farmers unless some form of Government subsidy is available. To date, the Government has not been willing to find such money.

There appear to be no easy answers. Other industries have floundered and disappeared without Government intervention; so should pig farmers be an exception? High health standards may well push up costs - but, in the shadow of the BSE fiasco, the Government could hardly sanction a cut in such standards.

Pig farmers urge that we buy British, yet the supermarket shopper will often choose the cheapest meat, which is likely to be foreign.

One thing is certain, something needs to be done to save the industry's bacon.

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