The smoke was still coming from the ruins of the Edenderry pig plant last Sunday as Glanbia management began contacting farmers to switch their pigs to Roscrea for processing.

This week, with most of the staff redeployed, it looks like business as usual for Glanbia, which controls more than 50 per cent of the Irish market and its hundreds of suppliers who cannot afford to keep pigs an extra day in their units.

Observers say the smooth way the problem was faced was because pig producers are businessmen rather than farmers and the survivors in the business, nearly 500, are used to dealing with a crisis.

Not one of the Glanbia suppliers contacted was critical of the company and all praised the way the company communicated with them and got on with arranging the transfer.

They were all, of course, highly critical of the price the factory pays them for their pigs and some said that they will have to cut back on production if the price they receive does not improve.

The main problem facing the Irish pig industry according to Teagasc expert, Dr Brendan Lynch, is that the cost of the grain which is fed to pigs, has increased in price by up to 40 per cent in recent months.

Low cereal yields in some producer countries caused by drought, demand for grain as an energy source and increased demand from southeast Asia has sent grain prices rocketing.

Producers now say that while they are receiving €1.40 per kg, their production costs are standing at €1.35 per kg and are rising on a weekly basis.

"There is no doubt that the producers are suffering a lot, but on the other hand they are very good operators and they know that at some stage they will have to get an increase for their produce," he said.

He said he suspected this would not happen until the squeeze hit all of Europe and the political pressure to increase prices would come.The costs would be passed on to the consumer and this would also be true of the poultry industry.

"Technically, the 500 producers who are left are very good and will be able to weather the storm, but there are other problems too," he said.

He added that there was an acute shortage of skilled labour for pig farms and many of the eastern Europeans who work on Irish farms do not have the husbandry skills.

"We in Teagasc are starting a pilot project to teach these skills through Polish in September in an effort to address this problem," said Dr Lynch who heads the Pig Production Development Unit at the Moorepark Research Centre.

Gerard Brickley of Bord Bia, the Irish Food Board, said that last year Irish pork exports stood at €223 million and the industry as a whole was worth in the region of €320 million taking in the home market.

The bulk of our pigmeat exports, he said, still go to the UK, which took 50,000 tonnes of Irish product last year and Germany, the biggest consumer of pork in the EU accounted for 12,000 tonnes, with France taking 6,000 tonnes.

"We have noticed in recent years that the processing companies are becoming more active in the international markets and are looking for niche markets abroad," he said.

He said that while the most recent census of the pig population had shown a fall of 3 per cent to 1.5 million heads, the population was stable and there was little change in throughput at Irish factories in the first six months of this year.

He too was of the opinion that there would have to be an increase in the prices paid to the producers to ensure that the industry remained stable and to prevent farmers leaving the sector.

Cormac Healy of Meat Industry Ireland, representing the processors, said it had recently met the Irish Farmers' Association to examine the sustainability of the sector.

"We have put in a joint submission asking the Minister for Agriculture and Food Mary Coughlan to set up a sectoral study of the industry, like she has done in the sheep area," he said.

"We would like to see a five-year plan emerging from that study by experts which would help point the way forward for both the producer and processors," he said.

"It should look at both the producer and processing side and plot a chart for the way forward," he added.