Limiting sow stalls good for pork industry - Carter

Use of sow stalls on New Zealand pig farms is to be limited to four weeks after mating in 2012, and prohibited by December 3, 2015, says Agriculture Minister David Carter.

"The growing unease of many New Zealanders about the use of sow stalls, which I share, made it clear that change was necessary," Mr Carter said while releasing the Animal Welfare (Pigs) Code of Welfare 2010, which will take effect on Friday.

"Worldwide there is increasing opposition to highly intensive systems of pig farming and New Zealand has a role to play in leading the way," said the minister.

Dry sow stalls are used in North America - including Canada, the source of most of New Zealand's imported pork - and most of the European Union, but the Australian pork industry recently voted to pursue the voluntary phasing out of sow stalls by 2017. Britain, Sweden and Finland have already banned dry sow stalls, while the Netherlands allows them for only four days, and Switzerland for 10 days.

In its original 2005 code, the minister's National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (Nawac) limited the period that sows are kept in farrowing crates to six weeks and dry sow stalls to four weeks from 2015.

But Mr Carter last year told a pork industry conference that the lead-in time to the 2015 constraint was too long, and after a TV broadcast of video taken by animal rights protesters during a break-in at a Levin piggery, Mr Carter said farmers had not done "well enough" to clean up their industry.

Today he said there would also be a reduction of one week in the period for which farrowing crates could be used.

"While the ... committee believes that the use of farrowing crates should also be phased out, it recognises this can only happen when alternative management systems and technologies are in place," Mr Carter said.

Nawac chairman John Hellstrom said most pig farmers already complied with the welfare standard, but some of the biggest pig farmers who were farming intensively would have to adapt.

Agricultural analysts have said banning sow stalls would cause price rises of up to 4.7 percent in pork, and there might be a drop in pig production of between 3.1 percent and 6.7 percent, with half a dozen farmers exiting the industry.

But the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has said the net cost of up to $3.9m will be borne by consumers through higher prices and reduced consumption of pork.

Some farms relying on sow stalls would be hurt and quit the industry, and the non-stall farms - probably using group housing - would earn higher prices for their meat.

Mr Carter said there was an opportunity for the pork industry to position itself as adopting some of the toughest welfare conditions in the world, and to persuade consumers to buy pork produced with humane methods.

"I see it as a very positive marketing opportunity for the New Zealand pork industry," he said.