Day 113 - 03 Apr 95 - Page 59


     
     1        A.  The whole system.
     2
     3   Q.   --- system.
     4        A.  And needing cheap food and sacrificing the sow, because
     5        after she has had five farrowings in two years she is
     6        really like the culled cow; she has been exhausted, she is
     7        weary and, in fact, the trade will take her then as a cast
     8        or culled sow.  So she only lasts for five farrowings over
     9        two years.  That is the standard.
    10
    11   Q.   So she lives to about how old?
    12        A.  Well, she comes into production at about six or eight
    13        months, and so she has two years of farrowing.  Her total
    14        age would be two and a half, roughly.
    15
    16   Q.   What age do, well, should pigs live to?
    17        A.  Well ----
    18
    19   Q.   In a normal ----
    20        A.  As far as can I tell, there are not many wild swine one
    21        can investigate now, but certainly they should get into
    22        their twenties.
    23
    24   Q.   Do you have pigs on your farm?
    25        A.  No, we do not.  We have confined ourselves to
    26        ruminants.
    27
    28   Q.   I am not dealing with things in any sensible order really.
    29        What particular practices with pigs concern you, apart from
    30        the things you have mentioned, concern you regarding pigs'
    31        welfare?
    32        A.  I will go back first of all five or seven years; you
    33        have asked me to do that several times.  I would single out
    34        castration.  That was common in male pigs at the time five
    35        or seven years ago.  That was really to prevent a complaint
    36        called boretaint that affects taint development in meat and
    37        butchers were very scared about that.  That has been
    38        reduced.  That has also been prompted by welfare interests
    39        because there was a barbarous process of castration on the
    40        pigs and it was not popular with the industry, because if
    41        you had a pig who was going to be slaughtered at 22 weeks
    42        and you took a week out while it was recovering from the
    43        castration, that was obviously a loss of profit.  So,
    44        although castration, emasculation, is still done, it is
    45        less.
    46
    47   Q.   When you say ----
    48
    49   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, I am sorry to intervene but this is not
    50        the first time this has happened.  At any rate until very 
    51        recently the only supplier, or virtually the only supplier, 
    52        of pig meat to McDonald's or for McDonald's was G.D. Bowes 
    53        & Sons (Norfolk).  I do not know if this gentleman knows
    54        that establishment, but this is one case in point.  His
    55        unchallenged evidence was they that had not castrated any
    56        pigs since the early 1970s, so what the value of this
    57        evidence is I am not at all sure.
    58
    59   MS. STEEL:  Mr. Bowes said that approximately 60 per cent of
    60        factory production were bought in from all over the

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