And this little piggy went wee wee wee after 76 beers

SYDNEY - Priscilla and her young understudy, Priscilla-Babe, are the star attraction of a public house in north-eastern Tasmania. The pair are pigs who are said to enjoy a beer - so much that patrons are encouraged to pour it down their throats for entertainment.

The pigs feature in guidebooks, and have appeared on travel shows.

They are even promoted by the Tasmanian tourism body. But animal welfare groups are not amused, with one, Choose Cruelty Free, attacking the pub for making money from something so "cheap and offensive".

Emma Haswell, from Against Animal Cruelty Tasmania, visited the offending premises, the Pub in the Paddock. She described the porcine antics as "one of the most horrible things I've seen, to see a pig begging for a stubby and everybody standing around laughing and jeering and sort of pouring stubbies down its neck".

But the pub's licensee, Anne Free, rejected the criticism, claiming that the pigs were well cared for and that she only allowed them light beer.

"I get quite irate if people come in and say 'oh, the pig is inebriated'," she told the ABC. "There's no way these pigs would be mistreated like that."

Priscilla and Priscilla-Babe are the latest in a series of pigs trained to swill at the bar by a succession of licensees.

Under Free's predecessor, Tyrrell McGeever, Priscilla had second billing after Slops, an older pig.

Before Slops there was Piggy Do, a female who reportedly could down 76 bottles of full-strength beer in one day.

She said the alcohol antics meant they were alive and not otherwise "in someone's freezer", Free said.

- INDEPENDENT