Otago pork producers unhappy with proposed pig welfare changes

Pigs in Bloem Farm on Otago Peninsula. Photo / Shawn McAvinue

If a new draft code of welfare for pigs gets approval, thousands of piglets will be crushed and piggeries will close, Otago pork producers say.

The Ministry for Primary Industries and the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee are consulting on proposed changes to how pigs are farmed in New Zealand.

The changes being proposed include:

• Prohibiting or restricting of the use of farrowing crates.
• Restricting the use of mating stalls.
• Requiring nesting material to be provided prior to farrowing.
• Increased space allowances for grower and weaner pigs.
• Increased weaning age from 21 to 28 days.

Consultation closes on June 24.

Bloem Farm owner Pieter Bloem (66) is a second-generation pig farmer on Otago Peninsula in Dunedin.

His 300 breeding sows, use 35 farrowing crates indoors on the farm, which fattens about 7500 pigs a year.

The proposed changes were a "step backwards" for the welfare of pigs.

Farrowing crates were "an essential tool" in a piggery.

If a new rule was introduced prohibiting the use of farrowing crates, many pig farmers would ignore it.

"Otherwise the whole industry is destroyed - we will have to shut up shop."

He started pig farming at the age of 17, working for his father.

"My father had no farrowing crates and it didn't take long for me to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown because we were losing up to 80 per cent of our piglets."

Sows killed piglets by accidentally squashing them.

Piglets stood under their mother because of the heat she radiated.

The sow would remain standing due to fear of squashing the piglets.

"I've seen sows absolutely agonising about how they were going to lie down. It's nuts."

The bars of a farrowing crate allowed a sow to get slowly from a standing to a lying position, giving the piglets time to get out of the way.

Bloem Farm owner Pieter Bloem watches piglets feeding on a sow in a farrowing crate in his piggery on Otago Peninsula. Photo / Shawn McAvinue

Piglet litters were much bigger now than they were when his father ran the piggery.

About a third of the sows these days would produce large litters of from 18 to 20 piglets.

Farrowing crates had helped him keep the pre-weaning mortality rate of litters to about 10 per cent - a big drop from up to 80 per cent deaths when they had no farrowing crates, he said.

He spent about $1.4 million a year on feed so he needed a high survival rate of his piglets to get a return on his investment.

"Nobody pays us for dead pigs."

The proposed rule to increase space allowances for grower and weaner pigs would require him to give them three times more space than he does now.

Some pigs preferred their own space.

Often sows in an open space fought, and they felt protected in a stall.

"They are vicious - they go at it hammer and tongs."

He had never forced a sow to enter a stall, he said.

"Farmers are really angry at the way we've been treated."