Petition for pig crates to end
A 100,000-strong petition calling for pig farrowing crates to be banned is being presented to Parliament this week.
The controversial crates are used to house a sow for five weeks, just before and after she gives birth, to stop her crushing her piglets. During that time she will be unable to turn around or move more than a few paces back and forth.
About 30 per cent of New Zealand’s pig farms do not use the crates but keep their pigs in huts outside, and brand their products under the Freedom Farms label.
Freedom Farms co-founder Gregor Fyfe said it was an issue of higher productivity versus animal welfare. ‘‘There’s no question that if you use the farrowing system we have there is a higher mortality rate and therefore a cost to the farmer. The offset is that animals have a better and more natural life.’’ New Zealand Pork chairman Ian Carter, who is one of the farmers who uses the farrowing crates for his intensive system, defends it as ‘‘evolving’’, and that’s partly because pigs are evolving and being bred much bigger.
A crate built 10 or 20 years ago is simply not big enough to accommodate some of the 300-plus kilogram sows being bred today.
‘‘There’s no question pigs are getting bigger but we’re also building bigger farrowing systems to meet the changing needs of the animals. For example we’re using hygienic plastic rather than stainless steel. They also have a lot more piglets than they did 20 years ago so we need to cater for that,’’ Carter said.
Animal rights group Safe, which organised the petition, said some countries with intensive indoor systems had tried to do away with the crates. But in 2015, Sweden decided to review its earlier decision to ban them, because too many piglets were being crushed.
‘‘They are looking at it which is a good thing because obviously they’re not doing something right. A lot of the research overseas has shown that breeding for large litter sizes of more than 12 as opposed to six or seven is one of the big factors, as well as staff training of the new facilities,’’ Safe spokesman Stephen Manson said.
Manson said as well as prohibiting farrowing crates, the industry needed to reverse engineer its breeding programmes so that it now started to select for smaller animals and litters.
The National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee looked at alternatives such as housing the pigs in outside farrowing huts but said they would result in more piglets dying from injury, hypothermia, starvation or disease. It recommended the industry should investigate the possibility of a shorter time in crates, replacement of crates, and addressing current problems with outdoor systems. It should also improve piglet survival through breeding for non-crushing sows and fewer but more robust piglets.
The petition comes at a time when the pork industry is also under siege from cheaper imports, from countries where animal welfare and environmental standards are lower than in New Zealand.