LOCAL IMPACT:PIG FARMERS Rory and Monica O'Brien have seen their home town of Mitchelstown, Co Cork, go through "horrendous" times recently, with the loss of the Galtee Meats factory.
The departure last year of the last few dozen employees from Galtee Meats was a body blow to a town which at its peak had upwards of 1,000 people working onsite. Rory and Monica O’Brien claim life was tough enough in the wake of the closure of Galtee, without having to face a crisis of consumer confidence in the pork industry.
Mr O’Brien said the contamination scare relating to pork products could potentially bankrupt the industry.
“There is thousands and thousands of tonnes of Christmas hams in stores today and these hams in the next three days will possibly be destroyed. It is the worst . . . time of the year for this,” he said.
“Will there be money to feed the pigs for Christmas? There is the possibility of the biggest meltdown of intensive Irish agriculture in years. This is about survival for pig farmers.”
Mr O’Brien, whose family have been pig farmers for generations, said he had no choice but to fight for survival and to be confident of getting through this difficult patch.
However, he argued that pig farmers felt the Government needed to “up their game” in order to protect the sector from the fate of the likes of Cappoquin Chickens, which lost out to imports from abroad.
He maintains that Irish pig farmers are as good as and arguably better than their international counterparts. However, farmers in Mitchelstown and elsewhere, he says, have been “let down” by a Government which failed to invest in the sector during the Celtic Tiger era.
“They forgot about us. The Government always employs political people instead of employing people who are big in the game,” he said. “They need to listen to a bit of common sense. We can’t have a bunch of civil servants running the industry. We need to start at the basics.”
Mr O’Brien added that it was also time for the Government to impose the same stringent regulations on imported pork products that Irish pig farmers face.
He admitted to being frustrated that perfectly good bacon from his farm was being included in the product recall with contaminated bacon from other farms.
Meanwhile, Monica O’Brien underlined how the Galtee operation benefited the whole community. She has fond memories of the wonderful community spirit in the Galtee factory, where she worked for 28 years. She remembers Halloween dances and community fundraisers. In addition to being a valued employer, Galtee was a major part of the social fabric of the town.
In the Galtee days farmers in Mitchelstown walked up to 1,000 pigs into the local plant each week. But now any pigs farmers fatten have to be sent up North or elsewhere.
The O’Briens say the whole area had a sense of interdependency. When cheese production started in Mitchelstown, one of the byproducts, whey, was perfect feed for pigs. So various sectors fed into each other and the local economy thrived. But that life is now over.
Ms O’Brien claims the couple’s children, aged between 11 and 24, are facing into an uncertain economic future in a town which is haemorrhaging jobs. She said if the children of the area were to continue their family tradition of pig farming, they would need the support and commitment of banks and the Government.
Mr O’Brien said, however, that despite the setbacks and the recalls, he was hopeful that pig farming will remain in his family and in the town for generations to come.
“We have been in farming for generations. We have no choice but to come out the other side. There has been salmonella scares, there has been foot and mouth scares, but we will come out of it. We have been through worse than what has happened today.”