Hi all

Antiseptic, CJM and TRTL, quite apart from the fact that PF has very capably presented viable alternatives which apply to the pork industry and reinforced our awareness that the large corporations do in fact sacrifice any sort of basic morality in favour of greed, I fail to see why it is the responsibility of the general public to generate alternatives for these people. I take the argument back to the Five Freedoms. For me, it is that simple.

No animal deserves the wretched misery intensively farmed pigs, chickens and battery hens endure in their short lives. Is that too hard a concept for you? To give you a bit more perspective - the RSPCA Inspector at the court hearing I went to yesterday advises that he has to return to the same property next week to shoot a whole lot more ill, maggot ridden, dying cows and calves. Meanwhile the perpetrator can afford an expensive barrister.

Cattle feedlots that I have seen were crammed full of cattle with no room to move, no shelter from the weather extremes, and mired alternatively with dust or with mud depending on the season.

I wondered how long it would be before Yabby found his way here to join the "producers". Guys, no-one has said farmers are the "enemy". What we say is that as community awareness grows, so does the belief and commitment that these standards are unacceptable, and intensive farming will fall so far short of expectations that these people will have to take a long, hard look at how they do what they do.

Sow stalls are already banned in the UK, parts of the EU and Smithfield and Maple Leaf in the US and Canada respectively are voluntarily phasing them out. Do you think this has happened without some "flag waving"? Battery cages will go the same way, because people are becoming more and more aware. Some of us believe that, since the people involved in these atrocities cannot be made to do the right thing voluntarily, legislative force will come eventually to make them do it.

Nicky

*Like I said, free range is the ultimate in pork and I target the top end of the market.*

PF that is wonderful and I wish you well, as you know. But it remains
niche and will remain so. It will probably expand, but even then
will remain niche and not become mainstream production, until
consumers are prepared to pay the extra costs involved.

Running pigs in open straw based shelters is hardly free range,
but has been mainstream in the pig industry for years, as it
makes economic sense and the pigs love it. Plenty of pigs have
been produced that way and sold as commodity pigs. They still are.

http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/file/0003/72435/sub014.rtf

According to this submission however, processors are simply
importing the equivelant of around 50'000 pigs per week, to
turn into smallgoods etc. Your humpies might make you feel great,
but you are hardly making a dent in the market :)

Companies like Smithfield, process 27 million pigs a year.
Producing commodity pork is trying to compete with them,
Australian producers simply can't compete. A few might want to do
niche, others will simply close down and do something else. Let
the public eat imports, unless their costs are covered. Fair enough.

Yabby, you have just washed over anything I have said.

I described pigs raised in eco shelters as an alternative, not as free range. An alternative to the cruel practice of sow stalls and farrowing crates. At present, mostly grower pigs are turned out of these sheds, why not use them for group housing of sows also? Take at look at some of these pictures http://www.westernplainspork.com/gallery.asp thats not small scale we are seeing.

Smithfield run the cruelest, most environmentally damaging agricultural operation in the world. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters

Any forward thinking pig producer would have no trouble marketing a clean, animal welfare friendly product against that.

You say compete or go bust. I say think outside the square.

PF, you continue to confuse two very different markets.

Westernplains, Otway and yourself are all aiming at the guilt free
niche market, where people pay extra. Quite different to the
commodity pork market, which is still by far the bulk of volume.

Thinking outside the square is great, I applaud it and promote it
all the time. But it will remain niche, not mainstream, as that
is how consumers vote with their wallets.

How Smithfield produce their pigs is irrelevant, as buyers frankly
don't care. They certainly know how to market pork, or they would
not sell 27 million pigs a year.

If the mainstream pig industry wants to invest research $, to find
ways of producing piglets without sow stalls, where cost per piglet
is no greater then the present system, well great, then they should
do it. But for those companies trying to compete in the commodity
market, which is most of the pig industry, the bottom line
matters as niche is a limited market. That is the reality.

I'm not saying its good or bad, I'm just saying, that is how it is.

Your system is great for you and great for a % of pig farmers who
want to do niche and can extract extra $ from consumers for providing
guilt free pork. Its great marketing and thinking outside the
square is all part of it. But its not the solution to the problems
that the Australian pig industry has, as it tries to compete with
global producers, who are extremely efficient and cut throat, in
what they do.

Its exactly the same in the chicken industry, where 3 suppliers
produce most of Australia's chickens. Most people buy on price,
on packaging, on convenience etc. The niche market is thriving,
as people buy free range etc, but its still only a small % of
the total chicken market. Guilt free marketing is a niche market
which only appeals to a limited %, as frankly the majority of
people don't care

Yabby, in the grand scheme of things, intensive farming is relatively new. Is it more that people just dont care, or they just dont know.

There have been many things in our culture that, in review, we as thinking, feeling human beings, have decided just were not the right things to do after all and change happened.

Intensive farming is only around 40- 50 years old, much like chemical farming. So many people still think that pigs are raised in sties and are oblivious to the existence of sow stalls or how this system of production really works. BTW we are learning quickly that chemical farming is not all that its cracked up to be either. Look at the growth of the organic market. The same will happen with intensive farming.

Granted, it will take time but we need to have a little more respect for the way our food is produced.

As for any arguement about price and tight budgets - pork is not a requirement of our diets. Let them eat cheap lamb (grass fed of course) I cant see anyone starving to death because they couldnt pay a fair price for pork.

More successful "hand waving" and more public scrutiny, a link which may interest you PF?

http://www.theage.com.au/national/little-lucy-threatens-pig-farmers-bacon-20080802-3ozx.html