MEDIA RELEASE

19 July 2010

Consumer Ad Campaign Challenges Pig Industry

A striking new advertising campaign launched today by national animal advocacy organisation SAFE seeks to warn consumers about a planned ‘100% New Zealand Welfare Approved Pork’ label. The ‘Don’t be fooled’ consumer campaign will be SAFE’s largest ever, and will consist of billboards, posters and a series of radio advertisements.

The ‘Don’t be fooled’ campaign, launched on the eve of the New Zealand Pork Board’s 2010 national conference, will directly challenge the New Zealand Pork Industry Board’s proposed ‘Welfare Approved’ pork labelling scheme. SAFE says the misleading labels will be available to any farm that passes an audit based on the current pig welfare code and, indeed, to the very same farms that caused consumer outrage in 2009 after their facilities were shown on television.

“SAFE says the standards for the pig welfare audit are so low that farmers who use cruel sow stalls or farrowing crates will be able to call their pork ‘Welfare-Approved’. It is outrageous that the pig industry has the audacity to label pork produced from factory-farmed pigs ‘welfare-approved’, given that research shows that crated pigs suffer, and consumers oppose these cruel farming methods,” says SAFE campaign director Hans Kriek.

SAFE also challenges pork industry comments that pork sold in supermarkets does not come from sows kept in stalls.

“These comments are designed to fool consumers into believing that sow crates are not used in the production of pork. The truth is that over half the pork on supermarket shelves comes from pigs born to mothers confined in sow stalls and farrowing crates. These pigs spend their first four weeks inside the crates with their mothers and most continue to be factory farmed until they are slaughtered, and will never see a grassy field or feel the sun on their backs,” says Mr Kriek.

ACTION TODAY
SAFE will launch its ‘Don’t be fooled’ campaign outside the Willis Street New World supermarket in Wellington at 12.30pm today. Lucy, the 2.5-metre high ‘super-pig’, will be on hand to warn consumers about falsely labelled pork.

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