Improve pig welfare standards, demand animal rights advocates

Pig producers across the EU should deliver higher welfare standards than the EU Pig Directive currently requires, say activists who are now calling for better practices and additional measures to ensure pig welfare.

“The legislation that exists right now, the EU Pig Directive, is seriously out of date, and it really needs to be brought up to date with current understandings of animal welfare science,” says Jo Swabe Senior Director of Public Affairs at Humane Society International Europe (HSI/Europe).

As the ‘End the Cage Age’ row rages, removing cages within pig husbandry is a significant part of the issue. “Pigs can still be isolated in an individual crate for up to 28 days of the gestation period,” said Swabe, adding that preventing the mutilation of piglets, through castration, tail docking and earmarking is also a top priority.

Pig mutilation

“There have been serious problems with the implementation of the legislation as it is. One of the main issues has been the failure of most member states, apart from Sweden and Finland, to implement the ban on routine tail-docking – that’s essentially the surgical mutilation that takes place when piglets are a few days old, where they will cut off the tail,” explained Swabe.

Pig producers dock tails to prevent tail-biting – no tail, nothing to bite! Although the directive indicates that tails should be left intact, farmers can remove them if they are having issues with tail-biting after all other measures have been explored. It’s thought that this is being exploited by farmers

Some of the other principles HSI has set out for improvement are; selective breeding, comfortable bedding along with foraging areas, family group systems, litter sizes aligned with sow nursing capacity, later-stage weaning in line with a more natural weaning age, stress reduction, and optimal health with low mortality rates.

“We’re putting these very, very intelligent animals in a situation where they have insufficient environmental enrichment to meet their welfare needs. They get bored and frustrated,” says Swabe. “We shouldn’t be adapting the animals to the environment, the environment should be adapted to the pigs.”

Positive animal welfare

Dr. Antoni Dalmau Bueno, a vet and welfare researcher in Spain is looking into ‘positive welfare’ indicators in pigs. “For instance, is there a group of bacteria in the gut of the animals that makes this animal more aggressive or in a worse mood state than other animals?” he says, and asks if a change of gut bacteria could add to ‘positive welfare’ for the pig.

“We need to look for other ways to check how animal welfare can be improved,” he said, adding that it is necessary to observe “animals that are not so nervous in a social environment, or nervous when the space allowance is not extremely big.”

No difference to consumers

Annechien Ten Have Mellema, a generational farmer in The Netherlands is an advocate for pig welfare, participating in many forums and committees, including as a member of the EU expert Group on alternatives to surgical castration of pigs. She has made many changes to what was once a ‘conventional’ pig farm over the years.

Her first move was to introduce group housing for sows in 2000 and since has adapted her pigs’ welfare standards to comply with Better Life label standards which are applied to pork products in the Netherlands.

Going organic

Better welfare standards have not proved a conversion to better sales in the supermarket. “I think it’s not that consumers don’t want to buy it, but it is difficult to get their attention in the shop,” she explains. “There’s no connection between what they think about and what they buy.”

This has proved quite a conundrum for her, but a recent fire at the farm has paused much of the production and when it comes to rebuilding, the farm will go organic.

“I thought, if there was also something on offer between organic and the one-star production and people didn’t have the money for organic they would buy more ‘animal friendly’ at a price point between the two – but it was a difficult journey,” she concedes.

Boar taint issues

Currently, the best standard overall in pig farming in the EU is the one imposed by organic pig farming. One of the issues that is prevalent in pig production is boar taint – a strong smell or flavour of the cooked meat of mature non-castrated male pigs. To prevent this in conventional pig farming hormone vaccines can used but in organic farming castration with anaesthetic is the option.

To prevent future castrations Liên Romeyns, project coordinator at BioForum Is working on a project to find alternative solutions.

“We are running different strategies – keeping intact boars and reducing the risk with feeds and management,” she says. The project will also determine whether pigs can be ‘finished’ earlier. As it stands, the finishing weight for an organic pig is higher than that of conventional farmed pigs.

“For us, it’s important that we continue to exert pressure on the European Commission to deliver on its animal welfare promises, but to also encourage the new MEPs to also call for action on animal welfare, including pig welfare,” adds Swabe.

[By Fiona Alston I Edited by Brian Maguire | Euractiv’s Advocacy Lab ]

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