Regardless of my previous cartoon on the matter, I do feel that the plight of the pig farmers is a serious matter.

It’s serious on several counts. First, and most obviously, the farmers will lose their jobs - and their livelihoods. It’s not as if they can just pick up another job again. Setting up and maintaining another farm where they could use their skills costs, I suspect, lot of money. They’re unlikely to have that if their farm has just gone bust. Coming on the tail of a report telling us 1 million rural households live in poverty, that can’t be good.

This also threatens the production of slightly more ethical pork. While the ethics of rasing animals for the purpose of killing and eating them is questionable - and that’s speaking as a serial carnivore - abusing, killing and eating animals are unquestionably unethical. We’re told 2/3rds of imported pork wouldn’t meet legal rearing standards. I’m not really comfortable with the idea of eating a pig that’s been raised in a hutch and then simply bludgeoned to death.

But what can be done? At first, it looks like the farmers are caught in the terrible trap of supply and demand. Seed prices are rocketting. Our stricter animal welfare laws mean raising pork is more expensive here than in the rest of the EU. Costs multiply massively for the farmers. Cheaper, imported, less ethical pork undercuts them. The free-marketeers shrug, and rub their hands, and sigh, and say they’re very sorry, but there’s nothing they can do, it’s the economy.

Of course, it’s not that simple. The government can try to help. This potentially involves several groups; supermarkets, consumers and farmers.

The price of pork in supermarkets is going up at the moment. And yet the farmers are only seeing a tiny fraction of this - barely above market price. Presumably, it’s going straight back into the supermarkets; hardly a fair deal for the farmers. Legislation designed to force buyers to pay farmers a minimum percentage of profits in order to cover higher costs. If nothing else, it’s a matter of sharing out the profits fairly. It might hurt the supermarkets, a little - but not enough to crash them in the same way this is doing to the farmers.

The government could go straight to the farmers. Aside from the simplicity of the concept that these farmers, having fallen on hard times through little fault of their own, deserve support, there is a case for government intervention anyway. The farmers’ rising costs are in part sparked by legislation demanding better rearing standards. Foreign competition has become increasingly difficult to deal with. Given that the government is partially responsible for their plight, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that it should provide some support while times are hard because of it.

And perhaps we could get something from the CAP too…

Banning imports of pork which does not meet the same ethical standards as are law for British farmers could help. Free-marketeers might squeal. But it’s not so much protectionism as putting British farmers back on a level playing field - with the benefit of that playing field being more ethical. It’s not stopping foreign competition - it’s making sure it’s ethical, and actually competitive.

Actually, I’m not sure if that’s possible in the EU - or, indeed, with imports from outside the EU because of the customs-union. If it’s possible, then great. If it’s not, then there’s a very strong cse for going to Brussels and shouting about it very loudly - it’s what the French do, isn’t it?

Perhaps most easily, we can go to the consumers. A campaign of labelling ethically raised pork prominently could make a major difference - as could a public campaign on the issue. The expositions into the horror of battery farming on Channel 4 made, I suspect, quite a difference to those that watched them. If enough people were converted, then life might get a little easier.

I’ve no idea the degree to which any, or all, of those would work. I do know they’d be better then the current situation of sitting around and watching farmers’ lives collapse. Unless rural poverty is your kind of thing, that is.