Ham buyers get the free-range message

If you're buying ham this Christmas choose free-range and boycott anything that isn't, say animal rights campaigners.

The latest volley in the Save Animals From Exploitation (Safe) campaign to give farmed pigs a better life is from actor Lisa Chappell – who, as a vegetarian, will be eating "lots of gorgeous salads and my mum's roast veggies" on Christmas Day – but nevertheless has a message for meat-eaters.

"If we are going to kill [pigs], they should at least have a life, they should be able to turn around."

Chappell said she was horrified by Safe's estimate that in New Zealand more than 22,000 pregnant sows are incarcerated inside crates so small that they cannot turn around.

The charity's campaign shot to prominence this year when comedian Mike King, formerly the TV advertising face of the NZ Pork Board, took part in undercover filming of a pig factory farm, and condemned the conditions he witnessed.

For the Sunday Star-Times photo shoot, Chappell modelled a T-shirt created for the campaign by World designer Denise l'Estrange-Corbet. It shows a pig chopped up in pieces with the slogan "Please don't eat me".

Chappell urged conscience-driven shoppers to lobby for clear labelling of supermarket meat.

"We can help by saying no to the factory pigs. I think most people, given the facts, would rather not be a part of that cruelty."

Buy a shirt online at www.choosecrueltyfree.org.nz/world and visit www.lovepigs.org.nz.

- © Fairfax NZ News