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Home > Farming Today > 16/08/25 Farming Today This Week: shooting licenses restricted, pig supply chain rules, carcass balance


	Podcast:		Farming Today
	Episode:		16/08/25 Farming Today This Week: shooting licenses restricted, pig supply chain rules, carcass balance
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:24:36
	Publish Date:		2025-08-16 06:00:00
	Description:		Salted pig's trotter? Brains on toast? Why the carcass balance is important to farmers. We like steak but we're not so keen on tripe, and we eat a lot of chicken but not the feet. To both reduce waste and get the best price for the whole animal or bird we need to do something with the offal. This is carcass balance, balancing the sale of the popular bits with finding markets for the bits that are less desirable here. Those parts that can't be sold are sent for rendering, using heat to separate them into fats and proteins to be sold as animal feed, fertiliser or go into things like cosmetics. Shooting clubs on Salisbury Plain say they may have to close because they can't get a licence to release game birds. Clubs near protected areas, like Sites of Special Scientific Interest, now need a special licence from Natural England to release birds like pheasants and that's now harder to get because of the threat of bird flu. The British Association for Shooting and Conservation says the licensing system is legally flawed and it's issued legal proceedings against Natural England. However, the RSPB would like to see the licensing regime extended. New rules to make trade fairer for pig producers came in this week. A series of recent difficulties in the industry revealed that many farmers didn't have proper contracts for their stock. The new system aims to change that. Presented by Charlotte Smith and produced by Beatrice Fenton.
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