Every now and then, television can really stir things up. It doesn’t happen often enough, but when it does it has real value—including entertainment value, if we’re honest.This past weekend, TVNZ’s Sunday programme broadcast a special report on pig farming in New Zealand. It was bound to be controversial, using comedian Mike King as the hook. Until late last year, King was the spokesperson for NZ Pork in commercials hawking their products. King has had a change of heart and is now speaking out against the pig farming practice of “dry crates”—very small metal cages in which sows are forced to live.
King went undercover—and illegally—onto a pig farm with the animal rights group S.A.F.E. and filmed the conditions—sows unable to turn around or even to move. Pigs chomped on the metal bars and one was lying dead.
New Zealand still allows these crates for pigs kept inside; they’re not the same as “sow crates” where sows are kept for a short time while they suckle their piglets. The dry crates are meant to house pigs for a relatively short time, but some are kept in them for years. Such crates have been banned in much of the developed world, but the previous Labour-led Government codified permission for them into law, pending a future review.
The pork producers’ lobby group claims that such bad practices are rare, but neither they—nor we—can know that for sure. They say that the industry is phasing out the crates, but they claim a huge cost per pig in converting. They also point out such practices are legal,
Indeed they are: S.A.F.E. alerted the authorities to the piggery they visited with Mike King, but Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries officials found the operation—horrible and disgusting as it was—was also perfectly legal. The owner, a former official with NZ Pork, hit out at the activists, claiming they stirred up the pigs, that they deliberately distressed them to get better video. Farmers say producers’ cost of production would be too high if they switched to free-range, and their margins too low. Whatever.
The fact is, supermarket shoppers have no way of knowing which pork comes from such terrible conditions and which are barn-raised or free range (apart from Freedom Farms, whose products are exclusively free range—and quite nice, btw). At the moment, free range products—labelled as such—cost a lot more than ordinary pork products, in part because of lack of supply, but also because they're usually organic, too. But that premium is eased wherever the crates are outlawed—increasing supply leads to falling prices (the word for this is “capitalism”).
We’ve seen this before: The demand for free-range eggs has been increasing, and free-range and barn-raised eggs are now clearly labelled, and the price difference between them and ordinary eggs from caged hens has shrunk pretty dramatically (like a lot of people I know, I now only buy free-range eggs).
So, while NZ Pork is being a little disingenuous about costs, if the pubic pressure keeps up we’ll see them tripping all over themselves to get ride of crates. And, the price of pork products raised in better conditions will drop. That’s at the heart of capitalism—the law of supply and demand. After all, “the consumer is king”.
2 comments:
It's funny..in the US, I avoided veal because of how the young calves were treated. I only just found out that those same conditions aren't used here.
However, I didn't know that pigs were trated this way (anywhere), until we tried the free range bacon a couple weekends ago at the food show. It is TASTY!!! We don't really buy bacon, but if we ever do, we'll buy that kind.
I find, too, that free range eggs are much more widely available here than the ONE brand in the US.
It wasn't that long ago that free range eggs weren't so easy to get, unless you were lucky enough to know someone with chickens. Worse, eggs labelled "barn raised" were sometimes actually from caged hens (not true anymore—the government makes sure of it).
But I also had no idea that pigs were still treated this way. When the current law was passed, I misunderstood and thought cages were being banned, which was what the Greens were pushing for. Fortunately, there's now a growing amount of free-range pork products available, so I think that ultimately the free market will force pig farmers to change their practices.
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