Revealed: The Cruelty Of U.K.’s Pork Suppliers
During visits to 60 farms across five European countries, researchers found that 80% of farms engaged in illegal practices such as barren pens and routine tail docking. The findings seem to support complaints from British farmers that they are facing unfair competition from other European nations where pigs are kept in worse conditions.
According to undercover visits to 60 European farms by investigators with Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), many pigs in the European Union (EU) suffer greatly despite EU rules restricting tail-docking and also requiring “environmental enrichment.”
Farmers are still allowed to use sow stalls that prevent pigs from moving while they wean their piglets. Animal rights campaigners say the practice is unnecessary in less intensive systems and the EU has agreed, banning gestation crates across Europe beginning in 2013.
Among the five countries studied, CIWF investigators determined that Spain’s farms had the worst conditions, followed by the Netherlands, Germany, Hungary, and Britain.