IN response to the opinion piece “Animal welfare: perception or reality” (Straight Furrow, June 12): What a patronising and self serving anti-urban tirade. Of course city dwellers don’t understand the way animals are reared in the worst examples of factory farming. The factory farmers don’t want them to. Because they know they would lose business if people really knew what went on in factory farms. As for stalls, crates and cages being necessary for welfare purposes, give us a break!
Have you pondered over the strange coincidence that the very systems required by factory farmers to maximise their profits, just happen to be those that are best for the animal. Oh I see.
We are not doing this for selfish reasons. We are doing this because we know these animals love rolling in their own excrement in a space so small they can’t turn around.
When Mike King hears them squealing from over a hundred metres away they are just “expressing their joy” at being alive.
It amazes me that veterinarians can spout such unscientific nonsense.
I can only conclude they must be totally blinded by emotion; in this case the emotion of greed or abject sniveling fear.
There is no scientific basis at all for the assertion that sow stalls are necessary for animal welfare.
Like all social species (including our own) sows can be aggressive at times. But studies by scientists whose minds are not clouded by emotion (in this case the emotion of greed), know what every good pig farmer has always known; that pigs rub along well together if they are given tolerable living conditions, space to move and something to occupy their mind.
Scientific studies have also shown that keeping sows in farrowing crates has no effect on piglet mortality.
The Scientific Veterinary Committee in 1997 concluded that pigs require plenty of space for both farrowing and gestation.
Again this is something good pig farmers already know. It is true that there is a shortage of land to feed people, but the best way to prevent shortages is to eat lower on the food chain.
Passing perfectly good food through animals before eating it is inherently wasteful.
Apart from the welfare implications, intensively farmed piggeries are an environmental disaster. A piggery can contain over 10,000 pigs. They all have rectums and together these produce as much sewage as a town of 16,000 people.
Unlike municipal sewage this is not treated and simply ends up in waterways.
A Wairarapa piggery is being prosecuted by the Regional Council for spewing essentially raw sewage into waterways.
A piggery in the Manuwatu has had repeated violations of its resource consent conditions regarding discharge, according to the regional council.
Jim Edwards’ piece represents nothing but a thinly disguised and emotional piece of advertising for the pork industry. I would urge anyone concerned with animal welfare or the environment to boycott pork, both New Zealand and imported.
(First published on straightfurrow.co.nz)
• Dr Morris is an animal welfare researcher. He is an associate of the NZ Centre for Human-Animal Studies and teaches environmental management at Bay of Plenty Polytechnic.
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