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Thursday, May 21, 2009

Taking things too far and PIGS.

Recently in New Zealand there has been a huge 'scandal' over the pig farming industry. Now I'm probably going to piss off animal rights activists with this post, but quite frankly, animal rights activists piss me off a lot, especially groups like the Animal Liberation Front and those that support them, namely P.E.T.A.
There are two huge problems with this whole pig farm scandal, one is that it contains many mistruths, and the other being that if the animal rights activists had it their way, they would bring an end to pig farming in New Zealand, and we would be forced to eat pork imported from other countries where the pigs actually are farmed in very poor conditions.
The scandal involved Mike King and a camera crew breaking into a pig farm at night, getting the pigs worked up, shining lights in their eyes, and getting animal rights activists even more worked up about pig welfare. The first problem is the depiction of pig farming in New Zealand. As far as I'm aware, the pigs do not live in the small pens depicted in the footage but are only held there for short durations, such as when the mothers are giving birth, to separate the sows (female pigs) and prevent the dominant sow from attacking the other sows or killing their young. The footage even showed a few shots of piglets being fed by their mothers.
The other problem is the effect it may have on our pig farming industry. If the activists pressure our government into banning pig stalls, our pig farmers will have a tougher job, and may have to hire extra staff to run the farm, and either causing them to go out of business (hurting the whole industry), or raise their prices. Either way, we are going to be importing a lot more pork from overseas, where we can't guarantee that the pigs were treated like royalty, hurting the economy, and still not making any progress with respect to animal rights.

So a note to animal activists. You're going to shit all over the pig farming industry if you're successful in this move, and you won't have done any good, our pork will come from overseas where the pigs were probably treated worse.

4 comments:

  1. To which the obvious solution is to ban pork (and meat in general) altogether. >_> It's not like it's essential. I think it's been about 14 years since I've eaten any meat other than fish, and about 2 years since I've eaten even that.

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  2. "It's not like its essential"?? Sure people can survive without meat..but do they want to? is it even healthy? If everything that had a negative externality was banned if it was considered non - essential, then life wouldnt be very fun.. having friends, holidays, leaving the house, even communicating arent really essential.. but do you want to give those up? I dont see how you can justify banning something because you dont like it, its very selfish and ignorant - i dont smoke, and i dont like smoking,but i dont think cigarettes should be banned, that is completely unfair. -My 2 cents, paid

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  3. Well said MT, I agree completely.

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  4. Have you read 'Eating Animals?' You should, it's good.

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