Peta protesters aimed to highlight treatment of sows in pig farms
Naked and heavily pregnant animal rights activists have caged themselves outside Jamie Oliver’s Islington restaurant to protest against the chef’s endorsement of British Pork.
However Oliver’s spokesman argued that the chef was a “big supporter” of animal welfare. In a recent Channel 4 programme, Jamie Saves Our Bacon,
Jamie Oliver: "British is best"
the chef showed conditions in European pig farms and urged people to buy British pork, saying conditions for pig rearing are more humane in the UK.
But the protesters insist: “The answer to saving pigs is not to buy British pork, it’s to go vegetarian.”
It may come as a surprise that, as someone who has been vegetarian for more than 12 years due to concerns about intensive farming, I don’t agree with Peta.
In a recent report for The Guardian, Jon Henley investigated standards of pig farming in the UK and Europe, particularly the Netherlands – the biggest supplier of Britain’s bacon.
He concluded:
If you’re concerned about pig welfare, you generally are better off buying British … Things are not perfect here, but they are quite a lot better.
Britons ate 1.6m tonnes of pork in 2007, of which more than 60% was imported. According to the British Pig Executive, an alarming 70% of the 970,000 tonnes of pig meat we import each year does not meet British welfare standards. Yet pig meat imports have been soaring for nearly a decade. Demand for UK pork, meanwhile, has slumped.
The reason is simple. Ten years ago British farmers introduced standards on pig welfare which have yet to come into force across the rest of the EU.
A sow stall in the Netherlands
Primarily they outlawed ’sow stalls’ – narrow cages with a bare concrete floor – where sows are kept for the duration of their gestation (almost four-months). With barely room to move, such conditions make the animals subject to infections and bone, muscle and heart problems, not to mention psychological problems.
Yet ‘farrowing crates’ – similar to sow stalls but with room to suckle piglets – are still used as common practice in the UK. Peta say the sows are kept in “damp and filthy” conditions, “unable to turn around, nuzzle their newborns or do anything else that they would naturally do.”
However Defra say:
“Sows can weigh a hundred times more than their piglets and can crush them without noticing – crushing is by far the largest cause of piglet mortality. It is equally important to protect the welfare of the piglets as that of the sow, which is why farrowing crates are often used.”
Still, according to Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), the new standards mean British pigs are more likely to enjoy straw (for bedding and rooting) than their European counterparts, and are less likely to be castrated (as is done in Europe, without aneasthetic), have their tails docked or teeth clipped (to minimise injury when fights break out in overcrowded pens).
However such regulations have made British pork much more expensive. And if you really want to enjoy pork chops with a clearer conscience, organic is the answer. Henley visits Eastbrook, an organic pig farm in Wiltshire, where pigs are reared on straw – without hormones or antibiotics – in huge, open-sided sheds with free access to open fields. But all this comes at a price. Overall it costs the farm double what it costs to produce a conventional pig.
The fact is, cheap meat and animal welfare will never go hand in hand. But vegetarianism is not the only option. Those continuing to eat meat should make a stand and support British farmers so we rely less on imports and put money back into our own economy. Anyone worried about the cost of buying British or organic should eat less meat altogether, as people did before the post-war explosion of intensive farming when – as far as I know – nobody ever died from a lack of bacon.
The sows are kept in tight stalls so they dont roll over on there piglets and kill them. PETA and other animal rights groups have a genocide agenda.