Worse than a dog's life for factory-farmed pigs

[Guest guest]

Hi,

 

I found this on a mailing list that consists of

articles about dogs! I really like the idea of trying

to get people to think of " farm " animals in terms of

their pets.

 

It's from the New Zealand Herald. The URL is:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=584695 & thesection=news & thesub\

section=general

 

Dianne

 

02.01.2002

The treatment of pregnant pigs in this country is

exceptional only in the degree of suffering it causes,

says PAT BASKETT*.

 

If dogs were treated the same way as thousands of pigs

are in this country, the perpetrators would likely be

behind bars.

 

Yet on the list of animal IQs, pigs rate higher than

dogs, which are protected by laws that punish people

for acts of cruelty.

 

The difference is that pigs become pork ... and bacon

.... and Christmas ham. They exist in our imaginations

as commodities. In the description that follows,

insert the name of a dog you know and you'll begin to

appreciate the life this animal leads.

 

I'll call her Phoebe because it's the females who get

the worst deal.

 

Phoebe lives in a metal-barred sow crate 60cm wide and

2m long. She can stand up or lie down but not turn

round. Sometimes she squats on her haunches - a

position that is unnatural to her but which gives some

relief to her joints - or she rocks back and forth,

hour after hour. When she stops rocking she takes one

of the metal bars in her mouth and chews on it.

 

This occupation takes her mind off her acute anxiety -

her inability to make a nest for the offspring to

which she is about to give birth. Phoebe's instinct is

to use her snout to create a large hollow and line it

with leaves and grasses or straw, but the floor of her

crate is either concrete or wooden slats.

 

Other anxieties relieve her terrible urge to

nest-build. Phoebe has sparse body hair and is

sensitive to temperature extremes.

 

In warm weather she craves the cooling effect of wet

mud because she does not have the sweat glands which

help other animals adjust to heat.

 

The filth gets her down - she hates having to foul the

tiny area in which she lives.

 

A few days before she gives birth, the farmer puts her

in a slightly larger cage called a farrowing crate.

But she still can't turn round.

 

When the piglets come - a dozen or more - they're a

welcome respite in the monotony of her existence. But

four weeks later they are taken from her, she is

re-inseminated and put back in her sow crate to wait

out another 16-week pregnancy.

 

There's slightly more than a 50 per cent chance that

the pig that provided your Christmas ham may not have

suffered like Phoebe. Two-thirds of farmers raise

their pigs by more humane methods but the other third

use sow crates in large-scale enterprises involving 46

per cent of all sows in the country - about 20,000

Phoebes.

 

Britain and Sweden have banned the crates, which are

also called dry sow stalls, and the European Union is

planning a long-term phasing out of them.

 

Our Government is reviewing the welfare code for pigs

through its National Animal Welfare Advisory

Committee

and is calling for public submissions.

 

Under the Animal Welfare Act 1999 animals must be

treated in ways that allow them to display normal

patterns of behaviour, except in " exceptional

circumstances " .

 

Factory farming is exceptional only in the degree of

suffering it causes Phoebe and her neighbours.

 

If 71 per cent of New Zealand farmers raise their pigs

without crates, then why don't the rest?

 

The Pork Industry Board has a draft proposal that

would

allow the use of the crates until 2012, enabling

farmers to phase them out gradually.

 

But the industry also wants them to be approved for

use in the first four weeks of a sow's pregnancy, as

this is the time she is most likely to resorb or

miscarry.

 

The SPCA has started its biggest campaign to ban this

cruel farming practice. If sows are to be confined

for the first four weeks, the society says, it should

be in pens of about 6 sq m, with bedding material

provided and a separate dunging area.

 

Sow crates are not the only abomination. Young pigs

(remember, they are marginally more intelligent than

your puppy) are often confined in crowded fattening

pens with concrete floors where their patterns of

behaviour are far from " normal " - so far, in fact,

that their tails are cut off to prevent " tail biting "

and more serious forms of cannibalism.

 

Normality, for a pig, consists of much more than a

simple abundance of food.

 

* Pat Baskett is an Auckland journalist.

 

 

 

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