Kerre Woodham: Pay your share to support ban on sow crates

A pig being held in a sow crate. Photo / Supplied

It's great news that sow crates are to be phased out of pork farms by 2015 - a triumph for consumer pressure and the Greens.

Who could forget that image of Sue Kedgley locked in a sow crate, illustrating the cramped conditions sows are kept in? The industry says that they respect the wishes of consumers - but New Zealanders will have to be prepared to pay more for their pork.

Local pig farmers are worried that they won't be able to compete with the 700,000kg of imported pork products that come from countries where sow crates are still used, and are asking New Zealanders to put their money where there mouths are and buy local.

As an enthusiastic omnivore, I would much rather my meat had a pleasant life before being killed humanely. I've been inside freezing works and seen cattle killed, and it happens so quickly, smoothly and relatively painlessly that if I could, I'd choose that way to go myself.

I won't buy battery-hen eggs and I've always bought free-range pork. It is more expensive; it just means you don't have bacon and ham quite so often.

The phasing out of sow crates is consistent with what's happening overseas; consumer pressure has seen Australian supermarket chain Coles announce that by 2014 it won't be selling fresh pork raised with the use of sow crates. The Netherlands and Switzerland have cut drastically the days pigs are to be kept in stalls and Britain, Sweden and Finland have banned dry sow stalls altogether.

However, Canada is yet to make any commitment to stopping the practice and that's where New Zealand sources most of its imported pork. So it's up to us, really: if we have principles about where our food comes from, we should be prepared to pay for them.