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Farmers are demanding that visa rules that require foreign vets and butchers to speak English be dropped to help tackle chronic staff shortages and mass culling of pigs.
The National Farmers' Union (NFU) last night called on Ministers to temporarily relax the rules so 15,000 extra workers can be brought to Britain on short-term visas to plug a meat production crisis.
The Government is currently offering just 1,000 temporary visas for butchers. Staff shortages in abattoirs have forced pig farmers to start culling hundreds of animals which will not be able to enter the food chain.
Meat industry trade bodies say that it is already too late to prevent some disruption to supplies to supermarkets and fear as many as 120,000 pigs could be killed and then burned.
Minette Batters (pictured), President of the NFU, told The Mail on Sunday: 'We want the required level of English to be lowered so there is a wider pool of workers who can come here and help to resolve this crisis
