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Animal charity demands pig farm welfare inquiry
AN animal rights group has called for an investigation into the pig farming industry after it claimed to have discovered dead and diseased animals in squalid conditions in North and East Yorkshire.
Animal Aid said it had visited 10 farms in the two counties along with Lincolnshire, Cornwall and Somerset and took photographs and film footage of pigs it said were living and dying in overcrowded, filthy pens.
The investigation was carried out in response to an advertising campaign by the industry which showed healthy pigs in straw-filled stalls or being reared free-range in a field.
Members of the group visited the farms unannounced during March and April this year to find out how the pigs were being treated in reality.
Two of the farms were said to have board members of the British Pig Executive (BPEX) as their company directors, while others are owned or directed by individuals with positions of influence within the industry.
BPEX and the National Pig Association were involved in the high-profile Pigs Are Worth It advertising campaign to promote the pig farming industry in Britain.
During its investigation, Animal Aid said it found dead and dying pigs and piglets in barren, overcrowded, dirty pens, illegal tail-docking, breeding sows kept in tiny crates in which they had no room to move and pigs with shoulder injuries.
On one farm, the group's members found a pile of 20 dead pigs, a spokeswoman said.
Kate Fowler-Reeves, head of campaigns at Animal Aid, described welfare standards on typical British pig farms as "abysmally poor" and criticised the industry's marketing campaign.
"Rarely has there been such a huge disparity between marketing hype and truth.
"While the idealised vision is perpetuated through expensive PR offensives, and while 'celebrity' farmers plead for the future of 'high welfare' pig farms, the wretched truth is pushed aside: that welfare standards on typical British pig farms are abysmally poor."
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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