Pig farmers feel penned in

By PHILIPPA STEVENSON agricultural editor

The dwindling pork industry looks increasingly like a pig penned in one of its much criticised sow stalls - cramped and under pressure from all sides.

Last week, pig farmers bought into possibly their last fight when they voted to phase out the sow stalls by 2012, but to also retain the option of using them in the first four weeks of pregnancy.

The SPCA, which wants the stalls to go by 2006, has vowed to mount a consumer boycott to get rid of them in one of the biggest campaigns in its history.

They have an ally in Agriculture Minister Jim Sutton, who told a Pork Industry Board meeting he also believed that the stalls could be gone in five years.

Board chief executive Angus Davidson said producers feared that a shorter phaseout would finish the industry.

The estimated cost of replacing the stalls to the 30 per cent of producers still using them - mostly large-scale operators - was up to $16 million, including resource consents and new animal housing.

Some producers with no room for expansion, especially around Auckland, would have to run fewer pigs, making their operations less economical.

"This in turn would result in the increased importation of pork from our competitors in Canada and Australia who currently house sows in stalls for their entire pregnancy," Mr Davidson said.

"The number of pork producers has declined dramatically in recent years and further pressure from imported product is considered a very real threat to the future viability of the New Zealand pork industry."

SPCA national president Peter Mason said it believed that five years was plenty of time to phase out the stalls without putting farmers still using them out of business.

New Zealand had no reason to match the European Union phaseout date of 2012. On its own it could move much faster, as Britain had done when it stopped using the stalls in 1999, he said.

The SPCA would wait for the release of a draft welfare code for pigs by the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (Nawac), possibly in November, before deciding on a campaign.

"If that [the draft] includes the continued use of sow stalls we will be running a major campaign targeting consumers and asking them to put submissions to Nawac that the stalls must go," Mr Mason said.

It would be one of the most expensive campaigns the SPCA had ever run, he said.

Mr Davidson said Nawac had to consider all submissions, including those of 350 pork producers.

"We'll take it to the committee and whatever determination they make we will have to live by it."

The battle over sow stalls is just one pressuring the industry which in 17 years has shrunk by three-quarters to 410 pig farms.

The attrition rate has been put down to many causes, including a lack of successors for retiring farmers, the departure of others forced out by changes to district plans, land use rules or the tough requirements of the Resource Management Act which have made operations uneconomical.

Some pig farmers got out because it was too expensive to upgrade substandard buildings, while the boom in other areas of farming, such as dairying, meant that farmers who once farmed pigs "on the side" had abandoned that idea to concentrate on more profitable options.

Mr Sutton said those that remained in the industry had made remarkable productivity gains as farms expanded and made use of technological advances.

But pork consumption had levelled at 17.1kg a person and the industry, after campaigning for protection against imports, no longer had enough capacity to supply domestic demand.

Virtually all bacon and more than a third of all pig meat on the market was imported, mostly from Canada.

"I am disappointed that there appears to have been no progress on differentiating your [pig farmers'] product from imported meat, or in highlighting products from farms which use farming techniques that even animal welfare activists approve of," Mr Sutton said.

The most lucrative, top-end of the market was sensitive to animal welfare concerns, and those consumers had to be attracted to the meat by the most modern, enlightened animal management methods.

Taking a role as industry marketing adviser, he said: "Emphasise the fact that there are no growth promotants used in pigs in New Zealand, and very little, if any, antibiotic is used for purely growth promotion purposes.

"These are positives to today's picky consumers."

Some pork could also be labelled and presented as New Zealand-grown free range, or organic, so consumers concerned about welfare issues would not have to feel they had to snub all pork.