Journalists and others seeking an independent assessment of animal welfare in the British pig industry may find the following summary useful.

Animal welfare and the British pig industry

From a paper by the Farm Animal Welfare Council, July 2008

• The Farm Animal Welfare Council is an independent advisory body established by the government in 1979. Its terms of reference are to keep under review the welfare of farm animals on agricultural land, at market, in transit and at the place of slaughter; and to advise the government of any legislative or other changes that may be necessary. The following is the text of a letter from the Farm Animal Welfare Council to Richard Lochhead, Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs in the Scottish Government, and relates to welfare aspects of British pig production.

The United Kingdom pig industry and imported pigmeat

The most recent data on number of breeding pigs for 2007 are 379,000 in England and Wales, 37,000 in Northern Ireland and 40,000 in Scotland. The United Kingdom as a whole showed a 2.7percent reduction in the number of breeding animals from 2006, whilst Scotland showed a 4.8 percent reduction. This continues a long term trend which has seen the United Kingdom herd fall substantially by 52 percent since 1997.

United Kingdom self-sufficiency in pigmeat has fallen from 84 percent in 1998, to an all time low of 50 percent in 2006. The total volume of pigmeat imports in 2006 was 872,183 tonnes, an increase of 5.5 percent from the previous year and of 37 percent since 2001. Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany are the main suppliers to the United Kingdom, but there are also imports from other European countries, e.g. France, Belgium, Ireland and Spain.

Comparison of British welfare standards for pigs with those of other countries that export to the United Kingdom

LEGISLATION

Within the European Union there is a common baseline for pig welfare standards set by Council Directives 91/630/EEC and 2001/88/EC, and Commission Directive 2001/93/EC. All countries outside the European Union that export to the United Kingdom, such as the United States, currently have no legislation that is specific for pigs.

Within the European Union, some countries have implemented legislation in addition to the European Union baseline, and this has been the case for the United Kingdom. The specific points of difference between the United Kingdom and the European Union baseline are as follows:

1. The United Kingdom has had a complete ban on close confinement in individual stalls for non-lactating sows since 1 January 1999. Most other countries continue to use stalls, and can do so until 2013 by which time they must have been phased out in the European Union. An exception to this is Sweden, where stalls are also no longer permitted, but imports to the United Kingdom from Sweden are small (<1 percent). The Netherlands adopted an intermediate date of 2008 to end the use of stall systems throughout pregnancy.

2. The United Kingdom does not allow stalls at any stage for non-lactating sows, whereas most other countries will continue to allow stalls for a period of four weeks after weaning beyond 2013, as permitted under current Directives.

VOLUNTARY MEASURES

More than 90 percent of United Kingdom pigmeat is produced under the auspices of farm assurance schemes, eg. the Quality Meat Scotland scheme, and its English equivalents run by Assured British Pigs and Genesis Quality Assurance. These schemes have defined written welfare standards which are audited by independent annual inspection and quarterly visits from a veterinary surgeon. Relevant points are:

1. No large-scale farm assurance schemes of this nature exist in other countries, although there is a range of small niche schemes in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Whilst large-scale industry schemes do operate in other European Union countries, for example the QSG scheme in Denmark, IKB scheme in the Netherlands and QS scheme in Germany, these focus predominantly on food safety rather than animal welfare issues and in some cases have a lower frequency of audit. The United Kingdom pig industry therefore has more rigorous inspection of compliance with animal welfare legislation and good practice than any other country.

2. The requirement for quarterly veterinary visits at which welfare is inspected is unique to the United Kingdom Whilst Denmark requires monthly veterinary visits, these are to assess compliance with the regulations governing the prescription of medicines, and do not involve an assessment of welfare.

3. Male piglets are not allowed to be castrated in a farm-assured herd in the United Kingdom. Castration without anaesthesia is currently the norm in all other European Union countries (and major pig producing countries outside the European Union). A recent European Union survey (2007) carried out as part of the Framework VI “PIGCAS” project confirmed that castration in these countries is done without anaesthesia and often with tearing of tissues in contravention of current Directives.

4. A high proportion of United Kingdom herds also require regular health monitoring through abattoir inspection schemes run by Wholesome Pigs Scotland and the British Pig Health Scheme. Few other countries operate such detailed inspection and feedback procedures, although Sweden is again an exception.

A number of European Union countries have developed commercial contracts specifically to supply products for the United Kingdom market. Although these contracts specify production of pigs to United Kingdom minimum legal standards, they still permit castration. Using the number of such herds and the volume of imported product, BPEX (2006) suggest that the great majority (70 percent) of pigs for export to the United Kingdom did not meet United Kingdom minimum legal standards.

PRODUCTION SYSTEMS

The United Kingdom has a higher proportion of extensive production systems than found in other European Union and non-European Union countries. In the United Kingdom, BPEX estimates that 40 percent of sows are managed in outdoor systems, and that the great majority of sows have access to straw bedding. It is also estimated that 65 percent of finishing pigs have some degree of straw bedding. It has not been possible to obtain comparable data for Scotland alone.

A survey carried out in 1999 indicated that no other European Union country had more than 10 percent of finishing pigs in systems with straw. The availability of straw, or other similar alternative, has been shown in many studies to be important for appropriate expression of exploratory and foraging motivation, which is of particular significance for the dry sow fed a regulated diet. Straw bedding may also reduce the prevalence of foot and leg ill health. Exporting countries (to the United Kingdom) keep the great majority of their pigs in un-bedded, slatted systems. Whilst the nature of the production system is of less importance than the quality of management and stockmanship in determining pig welfare, the more extensive systems used in the United Kingdom allow greater possibility for the satisfaction of behavioural needs.

OUTCOME ASSESSMENT OF PIG WELFARE

Welfare should be assessed by a combination of resource inputs and welfare outcomes and British scientists and farmers are pioneering such schemes. Assessment of welfare outcomes is a recent development and there are not yet international surveys that would permit an objective comparison between countries. The only published data relate to mortality in herds which has been recorded in databases for national analysis. These herds may not be representative of average performance in many countries.

Data published by the InterPIG group indicate a significantly higher sow mortality rate of 14 percent in Denmark, compared with other European Union-recorded countries including Great Britain (6%). The replacement rate of breeding animals is also higher in Denmark (50.4pc versus 43.8pc), suggesting that this cannot be simply attributed to a difference in disposal strategies for cull animals. The mortality of suckling piglets and growing pigs does not currently differ markedly between the European Union countries where such data are recorded.

In the future, objective welfare outcome data may become available through a standardized assessment scheme currently under development in the Framework VI project “Welfare Quality”. This would provide a much sounder basis for an international comparison of welfare between countries.

Cost of production in the United Kingdom and exporting countries

The United Kingdom has a higher cost of production than most other countries within the European Union. InterPIG standardised cost of production figures for 2006 showed the cost of production was 12pc higher in Britain than the European Union average, and more than 60pc higher than in North and South American exporting countries. World Trade Organisation rules are generally interpreted as precluding any trade restrictions on the basis of animal welfare standards in the country of origin, placing the European Union in general and Britain in particular at a significant competitive disadvantage.

It is difficult to ascribe increased cost of production to specific welfare measures within the United Kingdom, since other costs such as feed, land and labour also differ considerably between countries. However, the requirement to phase out sow stalls in advance of the rest of Europe imposed a significant cost penalty on United Kingdom producers for premature rebuilding or refurbishment.

This often involved a change from a slurry-based to a straw-based system, requiring new manure handling systems, manure stores, machinery and clear span buildings. The capital costs of the feeding systems and buildings alone were estimated at the time of transition to range from £400 to 700 per sow place, a substantial cost in terms of profitability. The ban on sow stalls and the use of straw have imposed significant additional costs on United Kingdom pig farmers, who have generally not been rewarded for their efforts in the market place.

Conclusions

The majority of pigs in the United Kingdom, including those in Scotland, are kept to a higher welfare standard than elsewhere in the European Union and other countries. The higher standard arises from differences in legislation and voluntary measures but both will have increased the costs of pig production in the United Kingdom relative to those in exporting countries.

While it is true that importers of pig meat into the United Kingdom could demand in their purchasing specifications that suppliers meet United Kingdom standards, this can only be voluntary and whether importers insist on such a requirement will be determined, in part, by market forces.

Other members of the food chain, particularly retailers, can play a major role by offering products of different welfare standards and origin, thereby catering for consumer choice. However, if pig meat is not labelled according to its welfare provenance, then concerned consumers will not be able to exercise their choice and may, unwittingly, purchase products that do not meet their requirements.

The arguments for welfare labelling of animal products were made in the FAWC report (June 2006) and the possible introduction of a European labelling scheme is under active consideration by the Commission at present.

 

 

 

 l NPA Trade Directory l Mechanical data l National Pig Association l Defra l BBC weather l
l Environment Agency l Food Standards Agency l Quality Meat Scotland l Scottish Executive l

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