Struggling pig farmers hope the worst price crisis in living memory will be over in the next two months... if supermarkets keep their promises.

Flashback: Pig farmers protest against foreign imports

The British Pig Industry Support Group has produced a supermarket "league of heroes" and also named stores it feels should be doing more to help the beleaguered sector.

During 1998, the group mounted a four-month-long campaign to pressure retailers into buying pigmeat on quality rather than price.

Thousands of pig farmers demonstrated outside supermarkets, while support group leaders engaged in dialogue with senior supermarket executives and Cabinet ministers.

North Yorkshire pig farmer Stewart Houston, who chairs the support group, said: "Other organisations were in discussion with supermarkets, but it was our members who were staring bankruptcy in the face and that gave us the impetus to get out there and challenge the retailers face to face."

He pledged: "The group will continue to campaign robustly for supermarkets to ban non-British-specification brand names and we will continue to draw attention to the fact that all supermarkets make handsome profits from pigmeat, whilst the rest of were ruined or nearly ruined during the 1998 crisis."

Mr Houston said: "Persuading supermarkets to change their buying policies is as difficult as getting a supertanker to change course. But, eventually, they cottoned on to the fact that we weren't going to go away.

"They now recognise it makes sound commercial sense to source pigmeats to British quality, which is universally recognised as being superior to anything the rest of the world produces."

Unlike most of their foreign counterparts, British pig farmers do not feed meat and bone meal to their animals; confine sows in small cages known as stalls; or castrate young male pigs.

Mr Houston said: "By agreeing to support the British specification, the leading supermarkets have demonstrated they do genuinely care about the food they sell their customers.

"Not only is the British product more welfare-friendly, but it also comes with gate-to-plate traceability, thanks to the three main audited assurance schemes that operate in this country - Fabpigs, Malton Code and RSPCA Freedom Foods." The support group aimed to persuade all supermarkets to change their buying policies by January 1, when stall and tether housing systems become illegal in Britain - but not elsewhere in Europe.

Top of the group's league table is Marks & Spencer. All pigmeat on sale at its stores will be sourced to the British specification - even imported Parma hams from Italy.

Sainsbury comes a close second. All pork on its shelves will meet the British standard, including the small amount it imports from Sweden.

The firm's own-label bacon will also comply, as will any brand-name bacon it sells, but the support group wants it to extend its pledge to all brand-name pigmeat products.

In third place is Yorkshire-based Asda, originally a farming co-operative, which has promised British specification on all its own-label pigmeat.

Even own-label pizzas which contain pork are guaranteed to be made using only British meat, except where specifically sourced from another region (such as Parma ham).

Stores which it says should be doing more include Somerfield and the chain of Co-operative shops.

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