Pig farmers 'victimised'

BY KAREN GAZLEY

As a Horowhenua pig farmer comes under renewed attention for conditions at his piggery, several former Horowhenua pig farmers are claiming they were "victimised" by neighbours after buying piggeries and the trend is contributing to shutting down the pork industry in New Zealand.

Taranaki sharemilker Jeff Cooley had just bought a 220-sow piggery in Foxton in 2003 when the former owner and three of his neighbours tried to shut him down, he said.

He said the district and regional councils had both visited the empty piggery before he bought it and approved the reopening of it. However, after the purchase his neighbours rang the council, and officials were obliged to walk around the boundary and charge $400 if they could smell the pigs.

Mr Coley said he knew of three pig farmers in Cambridge and five in the Manawatu with similar experiences.

"In each case pig farmers had to sell up and leave because the council had shut them down because the smell of the piggery was abhorrent to neighbours."

Mr Cooley accrued nearly $3000 in smell fines.

"They let you build your piggery so many metres from the road, but when mother nature decides to blow, what can you do about it?"

He held a Horizons report stating that as many as 90 per cent of the odour complaints were found to be unsubstantiated.

Paul and Helen Bentley closed their small Foxton piggery of 60 to 80 sows about five years ago after being "victimised" over a 14-year-period by a neighbour who was a former owner of the piggery, said Mrs Bentley. Their pig farm was different to most because it had inside/outside flow pens so pigs could roam outside in the sun, or be inside, she said.

"We used to clean the pig farm twice a day. A lot of pig farmers clean out the pens once every three days." Mr Bentley said the problem was the odour for about half an hour a day when they were pumping out the effluent.

They eventually failed an "odour test" while pumping out effluent.

Victimisation by the Greens and animal activists is a concern to pig farmers, said Mr Cooley.

"If you cannot afford to buy land next door to put sows out of the crates on to that land [or concrete pens] ... you have to shut up shop when the new animal welfare code comes into force."

Taranaki district Pig Committee chairman Ted Gane said New Zealand pig farming was under intense welfare pressure, but imported pig meat  about half of all pig meat eaten in New Zealand  was under none.

"While we are under severe pressure by the animal activists here in New Zealand about the way some of the adult stock are housed, overseas that is basically how they are all housed."

Mr Gane said pork prices to farmers are extremely depressed at the moment, so they do not have the money to make the changes.

Most pig meat imports come from Australia, North America and Scandinavia with piggeries of up to 50,000 sows.

Mr Gane said sow stalls became widely used to better manage animals that "beat the living daylights out of each other if mixed".

"It was a good management system as far as the farmer was concerned, but we have this impression put out there by Save Animals From Exploitation that we are cruel to the animals by doing this. It is not."

Kuku Beach Piggery owner and former pork board chairman Colin Kay, who has been under media spotlight, was reported as saying there were no welfare concerns at his piggery and he was a target of a political agenda of "extremist vegetarians". Mr Kay has been fighting to get a resource consent to build a new 4500 piggery in Foxton.

Local animal welfare activist Jo Patten says according to the World Society for the Protection of Animals, the most pressing need for animal welfare in the world today is factory farming, because it is so widespread and so cruel.

Judy Morley-Hall, of Kapiti Animal Welfare Society, is keen to see the crates and farrowing stalls banned because they are "inhumane" and "disgusting". She is angered by the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee which seems "very reluctant to acknowledge the extent of the terrible conditions", but believes the most important thing people can do is to stop buying all pork products. "Our only power resides in our purchasing choices," she said.

- Horowhenua Mail