UK extends visas to overseas butchers amid labor shortage

By SYLVIA HUI
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s government says it will allow up to 800 more foreign butchers work in the U.K. on temporary visas, after farmers said a labor shortage in meat processing has caused them to cull thousands of healthy pigs. Earlier, the pork industry warned that up to 150,000 pigs could be destroyed because a lack of abattoir butchers led to a backlog of pigs ready for slaughter, and farmers were struggling to find space for the animals. It said farmers already had to kill over 6,000 healthy pigs. Britain’s government has been facing a wider labor shortage and supply chain problems brought partly by the pandemic and Britain’s exit from the European Union.