Pork Conference Met With Hula-Hooping Protesters As New Footage Released

Pig farmers attending their annual conference in Wellington today will be met with an unusual sight: protestors with hula-hoops. It is New Zealand’s first protest aimed specifically at fattening pens – concrete pens in which pigs are raised for pork. The protest follows the release of never-before-seen undercover footage by activists.

SAFE says the raw footage shows the terrible lives of pigs intended for New Zealanders’ dinner tables, revealing an underweight piglet with presumed neurological issues struggling to walk and falling over, a pig with a prolapse showing great discomfort, and many pigs living in wet and filthy conditions. The pens are crowded, with pigs sometimes climbing on top of each other. The footage shows a topic rarely discussed in New Zealand – the conditions in which pigs are fattened up for slaughter.

“This year has been a particularly cold winter for us all. It is even worse for these piglets who not only have to live day to day lying on cold concrete floors but also have to contend with neglectful conditions whereby water is pouring from the ceiling and they are lying in their own excrement,” says SAFE Campaigns Officer Shanti Ahluwalia. “Why is this tolerated by the pork industry?”

In a fattening pen, a 70-kilogram pig is given about half a square meter of space – the size of a hula-hoop. The pigs spend a few months in a fattening pen before being sent to slaughter.

There has been much public controversy over pig farming, but most of it has concentrated on the conditions in which sows are kept to produce piglets. Currently, in farrowing crates, sows are prevented from turning around for weeks at a time before their young are taken away and placed in fattening pens.

“It is appalling that the government’s reviews so far have only focused on whether or not pigs need to be able to turn around,” says Mr Ahluwalia. “Pigs are extraordinarily intelligent and love to play. They need space to roam.”

SAFE says the hula-hoops are intended to call attention to how little space the pigs actually have. Since many New Zealanders weigh about 70 kilograms, people will be able to relate to the limited space a 70-kilogram pig has, as represented by the hula-hoop.

SAFE is calling on the government to ban all forms of factory farming of pigs. In the meantime, they are asking consumers to boycott this cruel industry.

EVENT DETAILS:
Protest at the NZPork Conference
12:15pm, Tuesday 28 July 2015
Rydges Hotel Wellington
75 Featherston Street
Wellington CBD

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