Few consumers realise how much farming animals for food has changed over the last fifty years. As long ago as 1965 a British report by Professor Brambell (The Brambell Report, UK) established five principles of welfare for farm animals that were regarded as the minimum standards of care that all livestock should enjoy. Australian Codes of Practice for farm animals (which are not enforceable in law) claim to offer the same basic welfare standards but the intensive system itself patently excludes the possibility of guaranteeing these freedoms.

Freedom from:

• Hunger and thirst
• Discomfort
• Pain, injury or disease
• Fear and distress

Freedom to:

• Express normal behaviours

However, in today’s intensive pig farms the last 4 of these minimum standards are breached on a regular, daily basis. Pigs suffer greatly during the rearing and slaughter process to arrive on the consumer’s plate. This is unethical. There are alternatives.

"An overview of a dry sow stall shed. Hundreds of pigs in one shed are confined to single stalls. Note the excrement in the aisle on the right. Sows may even have to lie in their own excrement."

In Queensland over 60% of the pig herd is in South East Queensland with a large portion of those in the Darling Downs area. There is also a high level of foreign ownership of these intensive piggeries.

FACT
• More than 98% of pigs in Australia are reared in intensive shed conditions for their entire, unnaturally short lives.
• Over 6 million pigs are slaughtered each year in Australia.
• The standard pig farm will have breeding sows, piglets, weaner's being fed for slaughter and boars for breeding. There are about 500,000 breeding sows kept in close confinement in Australia.
• Close confinement for a sow means being kept alone in a metal barred pen called a dry sow stall ( 0.6m X 2.0m) until she is ready to give birth (16 weeks). In this pen she cannot turn around. With difficulty she can take perhaps one step back or forwards. It is almost impossible for her to lie down without her legs extending into the next pen. Her head may even extend beyond the bottom bars of her pen.

"Pregnant pigs in their dry sow stalls. Notice how the pigs are too big for the stalls and their bodies intrude into the next door stall.
Sows spend 16 weeks like this."

BANS
The dry sow stall has been phased out in the UK (1999) and was banned in 2002 in Florida, USA. It is illegal in Sweden. Other countries, Finland, the Netherlands and Denmark have bans that come into effect in 2006, 2008 and 2014 respectively.

PIG HUSBANDRY
• Just before giving birth, the sow is moved into a farrowing crate. Again, this is a metal barred pen with a concrete and slatted floor area. She can only stand or lie down to give birth. She is provided with no straw or other bedding material. Sows naturally seek to make a nest in which to give birth. This is a very strong instinct in pigs. She has only the concrete floor. If the temperature control of the shed is not properly regulated, piglets often die from exposure to cold.
• Pigs are highly intelligent, social and sentient animals. Close confinement causes great mental and emotional stress which the pigs express in stereotypical behaviours – biting the metal bars all day, trying to clamber out of the pens, constant head bobbing.
• Piglets routinely have their eye teeth clipped and their tails docked to prevent the aggression and occasional cannibalism that occurs out of frustration at their confinement. No pain relief is given and piglets can die from the shock.
• IT WAS POOR PIG FARM MANAGEMENT THAT CAUSED THE OUTBREAK OF FOOT & MOUTH DISEASE IN BRITAIN IN 2001.
• As in all intensive systems, diseases affect the pig industry and the latest emerging disease in Australian herds is Glasser’s Disease which causes the animal a slow, painful death if not euthanised.

Active campaigning has been carried out by various groups in recent years.
• Video footage of inside intensive continental European pig farms was released by Compassion in World Farming in September 2000 highlighting the extreme cruelty of the sow stall in particular. Go to www.ciwf.co.uk
• Video footage of inside 18 intensive British pig units was released in March 2001. Although Britain has banned the dry sow stall (1999) this footage when viewed by an independent livestock vet, he judged the video thus: “The overall impression is of squalor, degradation, neglect, bad hygiene and bad animal welfare”.
• In New Zealand, the RNZSPCA and an active animal rights group, SAFE, are currently lobbying to have the sow stall banned in that country.
• The situation is hardly different in Australia. Animal Liberation video footage from pig farms in NWS, Victoria, Qld and SA show similar unacceptable conditions and has also resulted in prosecutions.

For further in depth information and images of this cruel industry, please visit these web sites:
www.animalliberation.org.au
www.animalsaustralia.org.au

WHAT YOU CAN DO

In 2003 Animal Liberation Qld, in conjunction with other animal groups around the country, will be launching and running a vigorous campaign against the intensive farming of pigs. We will start by lobbying for a ban on the DRY SOW STALL in this country. Education of the public about the role they can play as consumers in demanding cruelty-free food will be ongoing.

If you would like to know more about this or be involved/assist in this campaign, please contact the office on 3255 9572.

Colour information brochures and posters showing a sow in her metal pen will be available to distribute.

There will be a campaign postcard you can sign and either send to the Minister for Primary Industries and Rural Industries in Qld or send to us to forward on. Postcards are counted as YOUR submission to the Qld government to ask for an end to brutalising an animal in this way.

If you prefer to write you own letter, phone the office for an information sheet on “How to write a successful campaign letter”.