Day 114 - 04 Apr 95 - Page 35
1 if you can get them once moving with a gentle automatic
2 system from pen to pen, it causes less stress before they
3 are taken to the stunning area.
4
5 Q. How does that work without being driven by humans then?
6 A. It is done by gently sloping towards an attractive
7 area, an apparently attractive area, through a series of
8 pens and gates that gently open and gently close so that
9 they are given just the signal, really, the message, to
10 keep moving without a great deal of, well, without very
11 much noise and without this other hostile species much in
12 evidence.
13
14 Q. You mentioned about the use of the pig's nose. Are there
15 any welfare implications for the use of nose rings?
16 A. The only use for nose rings, well, the prime use is to
17 stop them from digging things up and stop them from causing
18 damage when they are really trying to do just what comes
19 naturally. Therefore, the welfare matter is that why do
20 you want to stop them doing that? I think it is an
21 indictment of the methods of husbandry that one has to
22 resort to that which is really a mutilation.
23
24 Q. Does it cause pigs pain in any way?
25 A. It does initially. I think that once they have got
26 used to it there is not a pain after a day or two. They
27 would find it annoying and they would find it frustrating.
28 You see, one of the excuses for this sort of thing is that,
29 well, it stops them from doing things that upset the system
30 or stops them, perhaps, from causing each other injury.
31 But then if the system is driving them to criminal
32 activities, in my opinion, you should get rid of the
33 environments that are aversive before you should resort to
34 these mutilations.
35
36 Q. So putting a nose ring in would restrict their natural
37 behaviour?
38 A. Yes.
39
40 Q. The flat deck system, I think we heard from Mr. Bowes that
41 they used to use or some of their supplies used to use the
42 single tier flat deck system; could you just outline the
43 problems with that system?
44 A. That system is not very common now. It was that and
45 the sweat box system were, essentially, decks of wood, or
46 something like that, where the pigs were kept in close
47 confinement when they were fairly young, generally, in
48 rather reduced light.
49
50 The problems were that a lot of piglets were crammed into a
51 small building, that was the trouble, and one had great
52 problems with ventilation and heating. Again, I would
53 emphasise that pigs are sensitive to changes of
54 temperature. So, it was an ideal circumstance as well as
55 the aerosols for spreading disease. That invited farmers
56 to apply a lot of drugs as preventatives, prophylactics,
57 which was dangerous because we know that multi-resistant
58 bugs were developing in those systems, so the thing was
59 unhealthy, unhygienic and it was cruel to the pigs ---
60
