I just finished watching the TVNZ Close Up interview (Friday 9th April) Mike Hosking did with Sam McIvor (Head of the NZ Pork Board) and Hans Kriek from SAFE. They talked about footage from 3 separate Waikato pig farms which was taken by an animal welfare vigilante recently. I want to establish that by making this a topic of a post on my blog, in no way am I condoning the hideous entity that is Mike Hosking's hair.
Hans says our Animal Welfare Act 1999 states something along the lines of 'animals must be free to exhibit the patterns they would naturally exhibit' (I don't know the exact wording, sorry). He says some (all?) pig farms in NZ are practising illegally in this respect; on the topic of sow crates, when a sow can only stand up, lie down, and have her piglets in a seperate, adjacent crate to suckle, one would hardly say that is reflective of a natural pattern.
Sam McIvor points out that in 'natural' situations, piglets are prone to be rolled on by the sows (something which I must say does not do the species' dignity any favours), so having them seperated where the sow simply cannot physically roll on them actually increases their chance of survival. Interesting.
Then they have the vet on, and asked his opinion on the footage of the pigs in the crates. Interestingly, shockingly, actually, he said he had no problem with the condition of the pigs and piglets in terms of their appearance, and the problems lay mostly in the hygiene procedures (or lack thereof) of the farmers.
Here, for those who haven't watched the video yet, let me point out the following images the footage includes:
- dead piglets left amongst the live ones: dead piglets with legs missing, dead piglets with inner organs exposed (Hans says cannibalism, Sam muttered something about feral cats or dogs getting in)
- sows and piglets covered in flies
- piglets lying in pig poo because it hasn't been cleaned up
- a sow with her udder covered in poo
The animal activists think they are doing the wrong thing.
Mike and his horrid hair pointed out that if the 'nicer' conditions which SAFE would be happy with were to be miraculously adopted, the price of NZ pork would rise through the roof and supermarkets would simply import cheaper, foreign pork which then has no standards at all to comply with anyway.
Looking at the footage of the poor little piggies, it strikes me that this kind of situation is *probably* present in any type of farming. We've all heard of the battery hens, then there is intensively farmed beef in the US, the possibility of 'cows in crates' which recently made NZ national news, and probably much more which is just not exposed for whatever reason (usually money I'm guessing).
So what do we do? Do we continue 'allowing' these conditions to occur in pig farms, and turn a blind eye? Do we all just stop buying pork? Do we all become vegetarians? Do we happily, 100% support the SAFE nominated changes and spend double or more on NZ pig-friendly pork? Do we actually not care?
I know which one of the above is probably likely to happen.
Let me point out my 'pig-friendly pork', is really an oxymoron. At the end of the day, what you are doing is slaughtering the pigs to eat them, and that is never going to be a nice situation to think about.
Recently I have realised meat doesn't satisfy me the way it used to. Sometimes it does, sure, but mostly at 4 or 5 pm when I'm starting to look forward to dinner, it's not usually the meat part that I get excited about.
Trouble is, I'm not sure I really know how to be a vegetarian.
Check out SAFE's For the Love of Pigs campaign. Until this Friday, April 16th, if you too are disturbed by these words I have written or the images you bravely chose to watch in the Close Up interview, make a submission to the Prime Minister to help in the protection of factory-farmed pigs by clicking this link.
Photo from http://www.thecuteproject.com/images/items/2540.jpg
2 comments:
He really does have spectacularly bad hair
My thinking is, there are millions of people in the world who are starving because we can't produce enough food, even though we're farming pretty much every inch of the planet we can. High-density farming might be cruel to the animals but right now it's one of our few options for producing more food at a lower price so we can feed the world.
Every time a farm switches to more "natural" or "humane" methods (whether it's freerange animals or organic plants) it's making less food for the same amount of farmable land.
Less cheap food in the world means people in poor countries starve so we can feel a little better about where our dinner comes from.
Of course that's no excuse for not cleaning the pig stalls regularly.
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