LOCAL IMPACT:"This is a disaster for the industry," said pig farmer Seán Norton who runs a medium sized operation of 800 breeding sows near Urlingford, Co Kilkenny.
"If processing factories start to close down for any reason at all it really doesn't bear thinking about from a supplier's point of view," he said.
"At the moment we're in a limbo.The only thing we know for certain is that the plant that normally takes our pigs are not killing today," said Mr Norton.
"We don't know if they'll be killing tomorrow and we don't know about next week. I'm sure the way the Department are handling the situation is the right way.
"It's going to be a monumental task to bring this right though and it's going to be expensive," said Seán who employs 11 at their Kilkenny farm.
"As a precedent we know this happened in Belgium and they managed to recover but it's unclear how it affected people on the ground," he said.