"One of the most important issues I look after in my role as Primary Industries Minister is animal welfare, especially on farms," Nathan Guy asserted recently

New Zealand prides itself on its animal welfare standards. Our Animal Welfare Act purportedly represents "some of the world's most progressive and comprehensive animal welfare law".

All of which makes undercover video footage just released by SAFE especially shocking. Recorded on a Waikato farm, the footage reveals mother pigs (sows) confined in cages barely larger than their own bodies.

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Some 16,000 New Zealand sows are confined in such cages from approximately a week prior to, until around four weeks after, they give birth.



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Video footage shows one sow desperately trying to escape her cage, and rough handling is also evident. One sow is repeatedly hit on the head with a plastic pipe, and piglets are thrown into containers, while their mothers emit distress calls.



NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS V FACTORY FARMS



Can such farmed animals really experience the good welfare championed by Nathan Guy? The answer is revealed partly by comparing modern factory farms to the environments in which pigs evolved.



Pigs naturally range extensively through rich forested environments, using their highly sensitive snouts to root among leaf litter, explore, and forage for food. Their strong social bonds and relatively complex animal societies have stimulated an intelligence greater than that of domesticated dogs – indeed, pigs are among the most intelligent of all mammals.



However, sows confined in farrowing crates such as those filmed cannot even turn around. They can barely take one step forwards or backwards. They cannot meet their highly-motivated behavioural needs to build nests, or to interact socially with other pigs. Their barren environments provide almost nothing to stimulate them, and they are reduced to repetitive chewing on the bars of their cages.



The hard concrete, plastic or wooden surfaces on which they must lie cause pressure sores, joint injuries and lameness. The near-total lack of stimulation results in unremitting weeks of boredom and frustration. It is difficult to imagine a less humane way to treat such a highly intelligent, social and sensitive animal.

PIGLET SURVIVAL

The drive for ever-greater financial returns per animal and per square metre of farm shed, has resulted in genetic selection for larger sows, oversize litters, and a desire to pack the maximum amount of animals possible into the minimum conceivable space.

SAFE/FARMWATCH Sows suffer extreme confinement and environmental deprivation.

Sows today weigh a staggering 260 kilograms on average, and the average litter size has increased from under 11 to over 13. By confining sows in tiny spaces, minimising their opportunity to exercise, we've increased the risks these outsize animals may accidentally smother and suffocate their numerous tiny offspring.

By tightly confining sows, farrowing crates aim to physically prevent this. As a result, sows now suffer extreme confinement and environmental deprivation.

And yet, piglet mortality remains significant in farrowing crates. Alternative systems do exist, and are already used by 30 per cent of New Zealand pig farmers. Nearly half of Swiss pig farms use larger pens rather than farrowing crates, and they have achieved comparable piglet survival rates.

And studies have indicated that that sow characteristics such as body length, genetics and parity (how often she has given birth before), farm husbandry standards, and other environmental factors, may be more important than housing system alone, in determining sow and piglet behaviour and ultimate survival.

The National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee stated: "Industry should be encouraged to improve piglet survival through breeding for non-crushing sows, breeding for good physiological sows and breeding more robust piglets."

ENDING RELIANCE ON FARROWING CRATES

But the best solution, surely, must be to reverse the factors that led us to this situation in the first place. Maximal productivity at virtually any cost to the pigs is not a goal any civilised nation should aspire to, and certainly, not one that prides itself on high welfare standards.

Through selective breeding sows should be downsized and provided with more space and environmental enrichment, to increase their physical agility. Their litters should be similarly downsized to a level that does not result in substantial mortality.

And most of all, New Zealand should ban its farrowing crates, and follow the lead of countries such as Switzerland, Norway and Sweden that have already successfully transitioned to alternative systems. Pigs should not pay such a high price for industry profit.

Andrew Knight is a veterinary Professor of Animal Welfare, and Director of Research and Education, with SAFE.