'Shocking' farms raise pigs for UK
Poland supplier faces accusations over welfare and drugs
Antony Barnett and Urmee Khan
Sunday April 2, 2006
The Observer
A food corporation that supplies British supermarkets - including Waitrose, Tesco and Sainsbury's - with pork has been condemned for 'appalling' animal welfare practices.
An undercover investigation by Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) has revealed that hundreds of animals, some injured or sick, are crammed into barns without daylight. Dead animals are left to rot on the ground. The investigation into Polish pig farms owned by Smithfields Food, one of the world's largest pork suppliers, also found that powerful cocktails of drugs are administered to pigs reared in intensive factory-style conditions. Many of these chemicals include controversial antibiotics banned as growth promoters in other countries.
Smithfield Foods, an American firm whose headquarters are in Virginia, supplies pork products to supermarket chains including Asda, Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury's, the Co-op, Iceland and Makro. Its brands include Morliny, Animex and PEK chopped pork. The company also supplies a range of Polish Wiejska pork sausages sold in Waitrose and Harrods. Last night Waitrose announced it had withdrawn the delicatessen products made by the company.
A key focus of the CIWF inquiries was Wieckowice, in the Polish region of Wielkopolska, where a state dairy farm was taken over in 2002 by Animex, a Smithfield Foods subsidiary, and turned into an industrial-scale pig-rearing installation. Up to 13,000 animals are kept here. Secret filming carried out last year by investigators at Wieckowice show hundreds of young pigs being kept in barns without outdoor exercise or daylight. Some appeared to be emaciated, sick or frail.
In a visit to another Smithfield Foods pig farm, at Boszkowo, investigators were shown giant open-air cesspits, filled with animal waste, that local people blame for contamination and pollution. 'Everywhere is the detritus of industrial factory farming - plastic syringe casings, intravenous needles and white clinical gloves - floating in the rancid cesspit and discarded on adjacent farmland,' says the CIWF report. Investigators found that, in one barn at the farm, 26 pigs died in a five-week period last summer.
Documents also show that among the cocktail of antibiotics used there is the drug Tylbian 20%, understood to be a form of Tylosin, banned in the European Union as a growth promoter since 1999.
While there is no suggestion of illegality or wrongdoing on the part of Smithfield Foods or its subsidiaries, the use of such drugs reveals the intensive nature of its pig production programme.
'Urgent action is needed throughout Europe to stop the suffering of factory-farmed pigs,' said Philip Lymbery, CIWF chief executive. 'We are urging the European Union to take tough action against these kinds of intensive farming.'
But John Allton Jones, chief executive of Smithfield Foods in the UK, defended the company. 'We take the issues raised in the report very seriously. Our experience of the sites gives no indication of the issues mentioned, but we will investigate thoroughly ... Our production sites are all British Retail Consortium approved.
'Smithfield has a range of pig farm facilities and is continually investing to develop them to the highest of European standards.'
A Waitrose spokeswoman said it would urgently investigate the report. 'We always strive for the highest standards of animal welfare. We expect all our suppliers to conform to high standards of animal welfare and traceability.' Similar statements were made by the other supermarkets and shops contacted by The Observer.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1745011,00.html
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From:
Jurek Duszynski
www.zielonapolska.org.pl