Pig farming in New Zealand

SAFE information sheet : #1

Most of the bacon, ham and pork eaten by New Zealanders comes from pigs kept in cruel intensive production systems, also known as factory farms. Scientific research shows that these systems do not allow pigs to fully satisfy their physical and behavioural needs, leading to stress and physical and mental illnesses.

Factory pig farming is banned or is being phased out in a number of countries overseas because of the suffering it causes. New Zealand's pig welfare legislation allows such cruelty. However this legislation is to be reviewed in 2010, providing an opportunity for these cruel systems to finally be phased out in New Zealand.

Pig facts

• Each New Zealander eats, on average, about 20 kilograms of pork each year.¹ About 42 per cent of that is imported.²

• In 2007 there were about 370,000 pigs kept on New Zealand farms, including nearly 47,000 breeding sows.³

• In 2007 about 760,000 pigs were killed in New Zealand slaughterhouses.⁴

• About 700,000 kg of pork is imported into New Zealand every week, mainly from Canada, USA, Australia and Finland.⁵

• About 5000 people are employed in the pig industry in New Zealand.⁶

• The pig meat industry contributes around $180 million to the economy each year.⁷

• There are about 360 pig farms in New Zealand. 56 per cent of the country's pigs are produced in herds of more than 1000 pigs.^₈

Pigs in the wild

Despite many thousands of years of domestication and selective breeding, farmed pigs retain most of the basic behavioural characteristics of their ancestor, the wild boar.⁹

Pigs are highly intelligent and curious. They are omnivorous and highly motivated to forage and explore their environment, widely searching for a diverse range of foods. A free-ranging pig may spend up to 75 per cent of her day foraging.¹⁰

Pigs like to live together in social groups, but prefer a stable social hierarchy, which they establish by fighting or avoidance.¹¹ The basic social unit is a group of two to six sows and their female offspring.¹²

Close to the time they are due to give birth, sows gather straw and other soft bedding materials to build a private nest away from their group, in which to give birth.¹³

In the wild, piglets are integrated into the social group gradually with little aggression, and are fully weaned after about 13 to 17 weeks.¹⁴

Intensive pig farming

Most pigs farmed in New Zealand are confined indoors at high densities, with the goal of producing large volumes of cheap meat. The pigs, however, pay the price as they attempt to cope with the artificial conditions, unnatural social groupings and painful and stressful farming practices.

Intensively farmed pigs in New Zealand live in barren environments that do not allow them to fully satisfy their physical and behavioural needs, resulting in stress and physical and mental ill health.¹⁵

Housing

Intensive pig farms confine pigs to large, windowless, atmospherically controlled sheds for their entire lives. The air inside these sheds may be dry and dusty with a strong smell of ammonia.

Such high density confinement and unnatural social groupings can result in aggression and fighting between pigs, which can lead to injuries and aborted pregnancies. Farmers therefore confine pregnant and lactating sows to individual crates, called sow stalls and farrowing crates respectively. These reduce physical injuries due to fighting, maximise production and simplify management, but prevent the animals from satisfying their physical and behavioural needs. Sows may spend much of their lives closely confined indoors in one or other of these sow crates.

Sow stalls

About 29 per cent of New Zealand pig farmers confine their breeding sows (who produce the piglets destined to become meat) in individual sow stalls for part or all of their pregnancies (four to 16 weeks). These farmers are mostly the large-scale producers who farm 45 per cent of all sows (about 21,000 in total).

Sow stalls are barren, metal-barred crates barely larger than the sow herself. Most crates are only 60 centimetres wide and 2 metres long, which means the animals are unable to turn around, and can only take a few steps backwards and forwards. The floors of the stalls are concrete, with a slatted area at the back for droppings and urine to drop through, and a water source and feeding trough at the front.

The animals are given controlled amounts of scientifically formulated, concentrated food, designed to satisfy the pigs' minimum nutritional requirements, but to minimise accumulation of excess fat due to lack of exercise.

Pregnant sows may be confined to sow stalls for part or all of their 16 week pregnancy. Shortly before they are due to give birth they are transferred to a farrowing crate.

Farrowing crates

Farrowing crates are similar to sow stalls in structure and size, but with the addition of a separate heated area for the piglets.

It is claimed that farrowing crates are used primarily to protect piglets from crushing by their mother. There is evidence however, that intensive pig farming itself has increased the risk of piglets being crushed. For example, modern sows are larger and longer than their wild ancestors, and some research indicates this has resulted in breeding a clumsier sow with reduced mothering abilities.¹⁶

Other factors that may increase the risk of piglets being crushed in intensive systems, include leg weakness due to extended confinement in crates, and the hard floors of the sow stalls, which unlike soft outdoor nests, do not cushion the piglets from damage.

Piglets in intensive farms are removed from their mothers (‘weaned') much earlier than would be the case naturally, typically at about four weeks.

Group housing of sows

Sows may spend some of their pregnancies in group housing in concrete floored pens with no bedding materials provided. Some group housed sows may be kept in ecoshelters with some bedding, or outdoors on grass.

Fattening pens
Once the piglets are removed from their mothers, they are placed in large groups in barren fattening pens with concrete or wooden-slatted floors. Fighting is the inevitable result of mixing unfamiliar pigs and a barren environment.

Growing pigs are fed high-energy, quickly digested feed which sustains a high growth rate. Few are given straw or other fibrous material however, frustrating the animals' innate urge to forage for food. As the piglets grow, the pens become overcrowded and the animals become increasingly stressed, restless and aggressive.

Health problems due to intensive pig farming

Sows

Intensively farmed sows suffer poor physical and mental health due to their close confinement in crates.¹⁷

Stereotypic behaviour: As a result of their concentrated and restricted maintenance diet, and the lack of available manipulable material such as straw, intensively farmed sows are constantly hungry and bored. Stereotypical behaviour often results, such as bar biting and head waving.¹⁸

Physical health problems: Crating also affects the health of the pigs' limbs, and reduces muscular strength due to the reduced ability to exercise, leading to lameness, reduced cardiovascular fitness and increased morbidity.¹⁹

Many sows in crates develop urinary problems, including cystitis (inflammation of the bladder, usually due to infection). Cystitis may develop because of the sows' inability to defecate in an area separate from their resting area, and due to their lameness, which may prevent the sow from urinating, which they do standing up.²⁰

Difficulty in lying down and standing up, due to the animals' lameness and close confinement, can also lead to skin lesions as a result of the sows bumping against the crates.²¹ Inadequate flooring can lead to overgrown claws and pain.²²

High levels of ammonia in intensive pig farms lead to inflammation of the pigs' eyes and respiratory tracts, and increased risk of respiratory distress and pneumonia.²³

Mental health problems: The barren unnatural environment and close confinement can also lead to mental health problems. Because the sow cannot express most of the behaviour she is genetically programmed to carry out, she can become bored, frustrated and anxious, and may show signs of stress, apathy and symptoms consistent with clinical depression.²⁴

The crated sow cannot carry out normal mating behaviour due to her confinement, leading to stress, frustration and impaired welfare.²⁵ In addition, despite their physical separation, crated sows can still see unfamiliar sows either side of them and aggressive behaviour can result. Although physical injury does not occur, the pigs may feel constantly stressed and fearful.

Due to confinement in a farrowing stall the sow is unable to build a private nest for her young before their birth, and she is unable to care for and wean her young as her instincts tell her, leading to stress and frustration.²⁶

Group housed sows

Although group housed sows suffer fewer health problems, crowding causes fighting and skin lesions on the sows' legs and feet.²⁷

Piglets

Piglet mortality: Piglet mortality is a major welfare problem in intensive farms. Modern breeds of pigs produce large litters with high piglet mortality. Deaths may be caused by crushing by the sow, hypothermia and/or inadequate food.²⁸

Early weaning is stressful to piglets and can cause a reduction in feeding, diarrhoea and impaired immune function.²⁹

Fattening pigs

Due to overcrowding and lack of fibrous material to eat and forage in, stressed piglets may fight with their pen mates and bite each other's tails, possibly leading to serious injury and cannibalism.³⁰

Instead of providing more space and fibrous material, farmers cut the piglets' tails off shortly after birth to decrease the chance of injury. This is a painful procedure carried out without painkillers, and may lead to long-term pain in the stump.³¹

Lameness is also common in growing pigs where the flooring type and lack of suitable bedding leads to bruising, foot erosion and infection of cuts and abrasions.³²

Transportation

Pigs are transported by trucks to slaughterhouses for slaughter and processing into meat. This is highly stressful for the animals because of the unfamiliar sights, sounds and crowding. Pigs are prone to travel sickness and are sensitive to temperature stress, dehydration, transport noise and vibration and poor handling by humans.³³ Significant numbers die each year during transportation to slaughter.³⁴

Management and human contact

The treatment of pigs by humans has a major effect on pig welfare. Pigs can become frightened of humans if they receive poor treatment from them, and the pigs may become continually stressed as a result.³⁵

Alternatives to factory farming

Outdoor production

In New Zealand, due to our temperate climate, a significant proportion of pigs are farmed outdoors for part or all of their lives. Many farmers use a mixture of outdoor (extensive) and indoor (intensive) techniques (such as taking sows indoors to give birth in farrowing crates, or raising weaner pigs in intensive or extensive group housing).

Group housing

Some farms raise their fattening pigs indoors in deep-bedded pens at lower densities than in intensive fattening pens. Such systems allow the piglets to satisfy more of their physical and behavioural needs, leading to less boredom and aggression. The piglets do not, however, have access to the outdoors, and they may be indoor bred (born in indoor farrowing crates, to sows previously confined to sow crates) or outdoor bred (in outdoor farrowing huts).

Free-range and organic production systems

Free-range and organic farms keep their pigs outdoors (with appropriate shelter) for their entire lives. Huts are provided in which the sows farrow (give birth) and care for their piglets. Such systems can allow pigs to satisfy more of their physical and behavioural needs than indoor systems. The animals are, however, still highly dependent on the quality of the farm's management and are highly vulnerable to how they are treated by humans.

Welfare problems that may be associated with outdoor systems include: inadequate shelter (to protect the animals from rain, cold and the sun); lameness; inadequate pasture; the insertion of nose rings to prevent pasture damage, which cause pain when the pig attempts to root in the ground.³⁶ Free-range pigs also suffer the stress of transportation and slaughter at the end of their short lives.

Animal welfare legislation

Animals in New Zealand are protected by the Animal Welfare Act 1999 (AWA). Although the farming practices outlined in this information sheet are legal in New Zealand, they are at odds with the spirit of the AWA, which states that "...persons in charge of animals...[must] take all reasonable steps to ensure that the physical, health and behavioural needs of the animals are met in accordance with both - (i) good practice; and (ii) scientific knowledge..."³⁷

Pig farming, along with a number of other animal industries, however, has exemption from this fundamental principle of the animal welfare law, through individual animal welfare codes. Therefore, although scientific research shows that the physical, health and behavioural needs of intensively farmed pigs are largely not met, this is legal under current New Zealand law.

The National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (NAWAC) reviewed the pig welfare code between 2001 and 2005, and acknowledged that dry sow stalls and farrowing crates did not meet all the obligations of the AWA. Nonetheless, due to lobbying by the pig industry, the final code allowed farrowing crates to be used for six weeks, and only limited dry sow stall use to four weeks after mating from 2015.

Dry sow stalls are banned in the United Kingdom and Sweden, and will soon be phased out in Finland, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Denmark. Farrowing crates are also banned in Sweden and Switzerland.

About 42 per cent of the pig meat sold in New Zealand is produced on factory farms overseas, in countries which may have even lower welfare standards than New Zealand's. This meat is not labelled by country of production, so consumers have no way of knowing how and where their pig meat was produced.

SAFE ©2010

1. New Zealand Pork Industry Board, Summary, Pork Industry Review, March 2009, p. 1.

2. New Zealand Pork Industry Board, Annual report 2008.

3. Ministry of Agriculture & Forestry, Livestock statistics, http://www.maf.govt.nz/statistics/pastoral/livestock-numbers/, Accessed 11 October 2009.

4. Ministry of Agriculture & Forestry, Slaughter rates, http://www.maf.govt.nz/statistics/pastoral/slaughter-rates/, Accessed 11 October 2009.

5. New Zealand Pork Industry Board, CEO Comment, Pork Outlook, September 2009, p. 1.

6. New Zealand Pork Industry Board, CEO Comment, Pork Outlook, September 2009, p. 1.

7. New Zealand Pork Industry Board, Summary, Pork Industry Review, March 2009, p. 1.

8. Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, 2009, The New Zealand Pork Industry, http://www.maf.govt.nz/mafnet/rural-nz/overviews/nzoverview011.htm Accessed 13 November 2009.

9. Scientific Veterinary Committee, The Welfare of Intensively Kept Pigs: Report of the Scientific Veterinary Committee, Adopted 30 September 1997, European Commission, p. 16.

10. European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), Scientific Report on Animal Health and Welfare Aspects of Different Housing and Husbandry Systems for Adult Breeding Boars, Pregnant, Farrowing Sows and Unweaned Piglets, Annex to the EFSA Journal, 2007, 572, 1-13.

11. Arey, D. & P. Brooke, 2006, Animal Welfare Aspects of Good Agricultural Practice: Pig Production, Compassion in World Farming Trust, Petersfield, Hampshire.

12. Arey & Brooke, 2006.

13. EFSA, 2007.

14. Scientific Veterinary Committee, 1997.

15. For example, see Scientific Veterinary Committee, 1997; Arey & Brooke, 2006; EFSA, 2007; Faucitano, L. & Schaefer, A.L., Welfare of Pigs from Birth to Slaughter, Wageningen Academic Publishers, 2008.

16. EFSA, 2007.

17. Scientific Veterinary Committee, 1997; Arey & Brooke, 2006; EFSA, 2007; Faucitano, L. & Schaefer, A.L., Welfare of Pigs from Birth to Slaughter, Wageningen Academic Publishers, 2008.

18. EFSA, 2007.

19. EFSA, 2007.

20. EFSA, 2007.

21. EFSA, 2007.

22. EFSA, 2007.

23. EFSA, 2007.

24. EFSA, 2007.

25. EFSA, 2007.

26. EFSA, 2007.

27. EFSA, 2007.

28. EFSA, 2007.

29. EFSA, 2007.

30. EFSA, 2007.

31. Scientific Veterinary Committee, 1997.

32. EFSA, 2007.

33. Faucitano & Schaefer, 2008.

34. Faucitano & Schaefer, 2008.

35. Scientific Veterinary Committee, 1997; Arey & Brooke, 2006; EFSA, 2007; Faucitano & Schaefer, 2008.

36. Scientific Veterinary Committee, 1997.

37. New Zealand Government. Animal Welfare Act 1999 No 142 (as at 01 October 2008), Public Act, http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1999/0142/latest/DLM50296.html?search=ts_act_animal+welfare_noresel&p=1