Defra has welcomed the ‘positive’ pig industry response to its consultation on Contractual Practice in the UK Pig Sector.
After what appeared to be a slow start, in the end more than 300 industry responses were submitted to the consultation thanks to a late surge ahead of the October 7 deadline. “We consider this a positive response rate,” Defra said.
The Department has now started its initial analysis and will now continue to analyse all the responses received and develop a Summary of Responses, outlining the answers to each question of the consultation. This will be published ‘in 2023’.
The findings will go to Ministers for their consideration. With officials they will then formulate and agree on a policy, which will then have to be implemented, and in all likelihood, legislation enacted.
A similar consultation was launched in June 2020 for the dairy sector. Defra published its summary of responses in February 2021, concluding that legislation was necessary to ‘address persistent issues in the relationships between dairy producers’.
That process is still ongoing. “It remains our intention to legislate in the UK dairy sector,” a Defra spokesperson told Pig World. “We continue to work with industry in the development of this legislation and intend to introduce the regulations in 2023.”
NPA chief policy adviser Rebecca Veale believes the pig timescale will be shorter. “The dairy sector has explored what’s legally possible and some elements of this process, for example, how the enforcement body could be structured, will really speed things up for us. But the reality is this won’t happen overnight,” she said.
You can read a summary the NPA’s response HERE