Our bacon proves pigs can fly!
Kiwis who bought bacon with a label that says ‘‘manufactured in New Zealand’’ and think they have home-produced rashers sizzling in the pan can think again. Almost certainly the pig was raised in an intensive farming factory somewhere across the world.
New Zealand produces about 45,000 tonnes of pig meat a year, but imports about 65,000 tonnes of pork. Pork Industry Board chairman Ian Carter says most of that imported pork is made into smallgoods here such as bacon, ham and sausages.
The latest figures from May this year show 42.4 per cent of imported pork came from Spain, 12.8 per cent from Finland and 10.4 per cent each from the US and Canada.
‘‘The imported pork doesn’t have to meet our animal welfare standards or our environment standards, but because it doesn’t get labelled, how does the consumer know what they are purchasing?’’ Carter says.
Very little New Zealand pig meat is used for making bacon. But our current food labelling laws help disguise this.
Because supermarkets don’t have to state the country of origin for bacon, it’s easy for shoppers to think they are getting a local product. New Zealand’s labelling requirements are only that the package says where the product has been made.
Freedom Farms’ co-founder Gregor Fyfe says this is an issue for many bacon buyers, who want to know where the pigs were raised.
So all a ‘‘product of New Zealand’’ label might mean is that the bacon was made here from frozen Spanish or Finnish pig meat.
‘‘We think it should be compulsory for country of origin labelling to be in place,’’ he says. Freedom Farms only makes bacon from free-range Kiwi pigs.
Fyfe guesses that more than 90 per cent of small goods here are made from imported pork.
A flow-on issue has been the arrival of imported ‘‘fresh pork’’ in supermarkets since regulations were relaxed a couple of years ago. In May, about 6 per cent of imports were non-frozen. That’s more than double fresh pork imports since 2014.
Fyfe says many shoppers would think a ‘‘fresh pork’’ label means it’s farmed in New Zealand. But that may or may not be the case.
‘‘I think they call it deep chill, I believe that gets around them having to call it frozen, so it’s not quite frozen, but it’s not fresh. Deep chill is something close to frozen, but legally it doesn’t have to be called frozen,’’ he says.