When you watch Tracy Worcester's documentary Pig Business you will see that much of the pork we eat in this country is produced in Europe by corporate- owned factory farms which abuse the animals, poison people and the environment and destroy rural communities. Huge transnational corporations set up their factories in countries with the lowest animal welfare standards, the lowest labour costs and the lowest environmental regulations. Banks support them with loans and they benefit from agribusiness subsidies provided by the EU at the expense of small family farms and rural communities.
In many EU countries these standards are lower than are allowed in the UK, where sow stalls have been banned since 1999. Yet under the EU free trade agreements, wholesalers are allowed to import pork into this country which has been raised in conditions which would be illegal in the UK. This means that many of our small scale pig farmers, producing wholesome meat raised humanely on outdoor farms, have been put out out of business because they cannot compete in this skewed market.Sow stalls, illegal in the UK
Factory produced pigmeat, provided by animals whose lives are spent in abject misery, confined permanently in steel cages with bare concrete floors in which they cannot turn around, is sold as a commodity on the European market, bought by processors of ham, bacon and sausages, and offered for sale in every corner shop and supermarket in the UK.David Cameron couldn't have put it better when he said that just as we don't import cars that fail our safety standards, we shouldn't import meat that falls below our welfare standards.
It is surely one of the most shocking absurdities of the so-called free European market that our government cannot or does not protect our own farmers from being overwhelmed by this unfair competition.
In Eastern Europe, Poland and Romania have been subjected to the onslaught of corporate factory farming , as has Mexico where Swine Flu emerged a few kilometres downwind from a huge pig factory jointly owned by US giant Smithfield Foods, the biggest pork producer in the world. In Poland, factory farm workers and neighbours, including schoolchildren, are sickened by the toxic stench from their factories, one of which is situated only 200 metres from a village.
Robert Kennedy Jr, who visited Poland many times to warn of the impending disaster, describes the spread of factory farms in the US as a catastrophe, and says in the film, 'they cannot produce a pig cheaper than a family farmer without breaking the law'.He has campaigned for many years against the spread of factory farming, and founded Waterkeeper Alliance to monitor pollution. In 2001 he filed a court case against Smithfield and obtained a settlement in which they undertook to improve pollution control at over 270 of their US factory farms.
The disturbing truth about factory farming is not widely known, partly because the companies prefer to conceal the realities of intensive pig farming, (no cameras allowed inside the factories) and partly because the present labelling regime in the UK does not inform the consumer that much of the meat on the shelves has been produced by caged sows, although following public demands, eggs must now be labelled if they are from caged hens. Britain's corporate-friendly libel laws mean that the media, unwilling to risk the huge cost of defending a libel action, often decide not to publish stories which criticise wealthy corporations. A few days before the planned broadcast of Pig Business, Channel Four, after receiving a second letter from Smithfield threatening legal action, postponed the broadcast and were advised by their lawyer to remove material including an interview with an ex worker. Other workers, fearing reprisals, said they would only appear in the film if their faces were pixillated.
And it gets worse. In January 2010 Compassion in World Farming published the results of a survey of factory farms in Europe which found that almost all were operating illegally, below even the minimal welfare standards required by the EU which demand that straw or equivalent material is provided, and forbids routine tail docking. This makes it even more important that consumers demand better labelling, demand to be informed whether the meat was produced by intensive factory farming so that they can avoid it and choose instead higher welfare pork, ie Freedom Food, Outdoor, Free Range or Organic.
.
