If you are driving through the Ribble Valley near Clitheroe in Lancashire, do keep an eye out for a field of very happy looking pigs. They might be a bit wobbly on their feet, or crashed out in the mud, but they are sure to have a big smile on their faces, because farmer Jim Beary likes to add a special ingredient to their feed – beer from the local brewery.

During the last month of the Gloucester Old Spots’ lives, as they are being fattened up for slaughter, he gives them a daily half-pint ration of bitter from the award-winning Bowland Brewery. “The pigs don’t mind which one, but it’s usually Hen Harrier, because that’s the brewery’s best-selling line, so they’ve got the most available,” says 28-year-old Beary. “It’s mainly the slops, the stuff that isn’t quite good enough to go out to the pubs, but the pigs aren’t fussy.” He doesn’t give them enough to get properly drunk. “They’ve got used to it now. They tend to get a bit randy, and then sleep it off a bit – just like students.”

It’s not that he likes his pigs to eat and drink like kings: he says pigs taste more of what they eat than any other animal, so as well as helping them to relax (an extra half of beer on slaughter day keeps them unstressed on the way to the abattoir, which is essential for tender meat), the beer also imbues the pork with a subtle sweetness. “The happier the pigs are, the better the quality of meat,” he says. The ten pigs he slaughters a week produce 50kg of the now-celebrated Bowland Beer Bangers, which he sells at farmers’ markets and to local pubs and restaurants. “People love the story behind the sausages, so they are sold on them before they even try them,” he says.

With the price of pig feed almost doubling in the past year, it is estimated that farmers are losing on average around £27 per pig. Consumer demand for premium meat is also down as consumers feel the pinch in their pocket. That is why nearly 60 per cent of pork is imported – mainly from more intensive farms on the continent where welfare standards are not as rigorous. By contrast, all of Beary’s pigs are properly free-range; kept outdoors all year round, where they have “the space and opportunity to indulge in their natural pig behaviour”.

According to the Pigs Are Worth It campaign, British pig farmers are losing £6 a second, and 95 per cent say they will be forced to sell up within a year. In an open letter earlier this year, campaigners claimed that they need supermarkets to pay farmers an extra 34p per kg, which would typically put just 7p-17p more on the price of a pack of pork products.

Beary, who has worked on the farm since he was old enough to walk, has never known it to be worse. “The increases in wheat and barley costs have been astronomical, and as a business it has been hard to take,” he says. “But just like any other business, you have to be innovative and think of new ways of getting out of the rut and increasing sales. These beer bangers are our way of doing that.”

He now has further plans in the pipeline, including creating the Kobe beef of the pig world (which may or may not involve his massaging the pigs in the manner of the famously pampered Japanese cattle), and experimenting with different recipes using some of Bowland’s other brews. He’s also hoping to get his sausages into local Booths supermarkets. “We’re thinking of doing a pint of sausages, which could be fun. After all,” he asks, “it works for prawns, so why not sausages?”

www.ribblevalleymeat.co.uk

www.bowlandbrewery.com

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