Animal rights advocates on Wednesday urged the government to completely ban the practice of confining female breeding pigs to sow stalls, or gestation crates, after they are mated or artificially inseminated, saying that the Council of Agriculture (COA) should set goals on when and how the inhumane treatment of pigs could be eliminated.
The Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST) held a news conference in Taipei to highlight the plight of about 600,000 or so breeding sows in Taiwan on the eve of Mother’s Day, which falls on Sunday this year.
While women can move around freely and request maternity leave, sows are imprisoned in stalls throughout their pregnancy and are treated as permanent breeding machines, the society said.
Photo: CNA, provided by Environment & Animal Society of Taiwan
EAST director Chen Yu-min (陳玉敏) said that pig farmers would lock breeding pigs in stalls and prepare them for artificial insemination when they turn seven months old and become sexually mature.
After becoming pregnant, the sows then spend the next four months being confined in stalls until just before they deliver their piglets, she said.
A sow stall is about 2m in length and about 0.6m in width, and is only big enough for a pig to stand and lie face down or one side, Chen said, adding that it has no room for pigs to move forward or backward, so that some sows even have to sleep in their own feces.
Breeding stalls are particularly brutal for bigger breeding sows, Chen said.
As they grow bigger during pregnancy, they not only experience the discomfort caused by their bodies pressed against the metal rails of stalls, but their skins can become irritated and swollen or even start to rot because of the constant friction between their skins the metal, she said.
A few days before they are about to give birth, pigs are relocated to farrowing crates to deliver piglets and nurse them, Chen said.
Movement is also restricted in these crates, she added.
“On average, breeding sows get pregnant 1.5 to 2.4 times per year and deliver eight to 12 piglets with each pregnancy. When their fertility starts to decrease, they are sent to the slaughterhouse. You can say their lives are spent between gestation crates and farrowing crates while giving birth continually to piglets in small and narrow places,” Chen said.
Data from the society showed that each Taiwanese on average consumes 38kg of pork per year, 90 percent of which comes from local pig farms. The nation has 7,609 pig farms, raising approximately 5.44 million pigs. About 600,000 of these are breeding sows.
Despite scientific studies showing that the use of breeding stalls affects pigs’ physical and mental health, only 10 pig farms have abandoned the practice, the data showed.
The society pointed to a 2009 study published by former Department of Animal Industry director Hsu Kuei-sen (許桂森), which showed that breeding pigs in Taiwan produce on average 14 pigs that can be sold, which is significantly lower than in the US (20 pigs) and Denmark (22 pigs).
At the same time, the cost of raising pigs is 1.7 times to 1.8 times higher in Taiwan than in the US or Canada, while the survival rates of growing-finishing pigs have been between 68 and 72 percent in recent years, which is also lower than the US (82 percent), Australia (81 percent) and Denmark (80 percent), the society said.
Global efforts to abolish or impose limits on the use of sow stalls since the 1980s have shown results, the society said, as Sweden abolished breeding stalls in 1988 and the UK banned the use of sow stalls in 1999, except seven days before delivery and the day that piglets wean from their mothers.
The EU also banned the use of sow stalls in 2013, but they are permitted during the first four weeks of a pig’s pregnancy, whereas the New Zealand has completely banned the practice, it said.
COA Animal Protection Section chief Jiang Wen-chuan (江文全) said that draft guidelines on pig-friendly production systems are scheduled to be published in September for farmers’ reference.
The guidelines would recommend that pig farmers stop using breeding stalls, he said.
“Breeding stalls have been used in the US and Europe for decades. They were considered the most cost-effective way to breed pigs, preventing mothers from crushing and killing the piglets. With global awareness of animal welfare on the rise, we hope that pig farmers can gradually change their methods,” he said.
As the cost of altering production processes would be high, Wang said that authorities would raise awareness among pig farmers and offer assistance to those willing to change their breeding methods.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching