Animal factories

March 2024

Pig factory

I have forced myself to watch a fair number of programmes about the horrors of factory farming.  This one was Hogwood, on Netflix and elsewhere, the name of a pig ‘farm’ in Warwickshire.  Multiple fearless investigations were undertaken by the vegan charity Viva! exposing, as they described it, a vision of hell.  It was no exaggeration.  Desperate pigs were resorting to cannibalism.  The farm had been approved by the government, Tesco and Red Tractor.  Tesco took a look and declared that everything was absolutely fine, as did the farmer, and it took them several years before they finally dropped Hogwood after further and more widely publicised exposés.  That’s just one farm among very many – it is a complete lie to say that farming in the UK has the best animal welfare standards in the world.  Red Tractor is run by the National Farmers’ Union and Dairy UK and has no independence and no authority to issue fines or any other form of sanction.  A spokesman for Sainsbury’s explained that they would have nothing to do with Red Tractor which he described as no more than a marketing con.  There was nothing actually illegal going on at Hogwood, but there were levels of cruelty, neglect and suffering which certainly should be.  And then some.  It was also pointed out in the documentary that these places are reservoirs of infection, the largest contributors to the environmental crisis, and through the widespread, quotidian, preventative use of them, leading us towards what has been described as an antibiotics apocalypse. 

This is Bert, one of the rescued pigs at Trindledown Farm.  I knew him well.  He could be moody, impatient, funny.  He was also extremely well-organised.  Everything in his enclosure had to be just so and he would get quite stroppy if you moved so much as a fallen branch.  That was for him to decide.  A gentle and intelligent soul.  Once he knew me and trusted me, it was always a joy to go up and serve breakfast or supper and attend to his various other requirements. 

Turkey factory

The Bernard Matthews facility at Great Witchingham in Norfolk is to close, which is terrific news.  That’s Bernard Matthews, of course, of the notorious turkey twizzlers, taken on by Jamie Oliver as part of a campaign for better, healthier food for children in our schools.  Matthews was long a target for animal rights activists protesting the intensive factory farming methods and there have been unwelcome headlines on a number of occasions relating to ill-treatment of the birds (including two employees playing ‘baseball’ with live turkeys, of which there is video evidence), poor biosecurity, a bird flu outbreak, and a lack of concern for workers’ health and safety.  In one of the latter incidents, the firm was fined £400,000.  When the Food Standards Agency found no or insufficient evidence of any offences relating to the bird flu outbreak in 2007, Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Chris Huhne MP described the outcome as “astonishing”. 

Salmon factory

Salmon farming was discussed in an earlier post, but I am looking forward to a short animated film made by Karni Arieli and Saul Freed, with a commentary by Marianne Faithfull, Wild Summon, which follows the life cycle of a female salmon.  Arieli is quoted in The Times: “Covid was a red flag saying you can’t separate yourself from nature.  You think you’re not nature; you think you’re better than nature.  But we’re going to show you what you are and that is that we’re fragile beings.  We’ve got this kind of detachment, thinking that it’s ‘them’ and ‘us’.  But there is no ‘them; and ‘us’, you know.  We’re really just ‘us’.”