Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As we head into the festive season, I wish to speak today about a decision made last week by Australian Pork Ltd, APL, the industry’s peak research and marketing body, to ban the use of sow stalls for pregnant pigs across Australia by 2017. This decision, made at the organisation’s annual general meeting, has been praised by animal welfare and consumer groups across the country as a significant step toward improving agricultural animal protection standards. Groups such as Voiceless, the RSPCA, Animals Australia and WSPA have been campaigning to end the use of sow stalls in Australia and transition to a free-range pork industry across the country.

Currently, sow stalls are used by the pork industry to house pregnant pigs for all or part of their 16-week pregnancy, and national standards to come into effect in 2017 would only limit the use of these sow stalls to six weeks of pregnancy. Such confinement to stalls has traditionally been justified as a way of minimising the space needed to house pigs and as a way of reducing behaviour which can lead to a risk of sows losing a pregnancy in the early stages. Yet recent studies confirm that confining a sow for any period has a severely detrimental effect on physical health and behaviour. Pigs are naturally sociable, highly intelligent animals. When they are kept outside, they spend many hours exploring their environment and foraging. Sow stalls and their counterparts, farrowing crates, block these natural instincts and lead to a life of confinement and distress for the sow and her piglets. In both of these environments, the sow cannot turn around and can only take one step backwards or forwards. The stalls are made of metal bars with metal slatted flooring, with dimensions of about two metres by 0.6 metres square.

The RSPCA estimates that, at any one time, 250,000 breeding sows are confined to stalls in Australia. I am sure it would shock members and people in the wider community to know that this confinement continues for most of the animals’ adult lives. Thus the decision by the industry to ban sow stalls altogether by 2017 is very significant. Brian Sherman AM, co-founder and director of Voiceless, has called on the federal government to follow the industry’s lead and align national standards with the decision made by APL. I support this call and believe that consideration should be given to revising the Commonwealth code of practice when it comes to housing pigs in sow stalls. The only state or territory with a more progressive policy on sow stalls is Tasmania, which is moving to ban them completely from 2017, bringing its policy in line with other jurisdictions such as the UK and Sweden. Despite the change in those countries, the productivity of sows is the same as in Australia, in the case of the UK, or even better, in the case of Sweden.

Dr Malcolm Caulfield, a lawyer and scientist with over 35 years experience working in the agriculture industry and now a key legal adviser for Voiceless, has noted that the Senate Select Committee on Animal Welfare observed in its Intensive livestock production report in June 1990 that stalls were an ‘undesirable means of restraint’ and that ‘future trends in housing the dry sow should be away from individually confined stall systems and this be reflected in the codes of practice’. That was 20 years ago, and I think we have reached the future by now—certainly other countries have when it comes to stopping this inhumane practice.

In addition to the animal welfare benefits, there are also positive environmental and economic benefits of group or free-range pig farming. Sow stall sheds use high levels of energy for heating, for piglets, and ventilation and pumping systems for manure run-off. Intensive farming employs the excessive use of antibiotics to ward off chronic infectious disease. Other sectors of the industry are responding to the national campaign to phase out sow stalls. Coles supermarkets announced last week that from 2014 they will only source their pig meat from farms that do not use sow stalls. I applaud that stance.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

This is also an issue that has a significant food labelling aspect because consumers may be misled as to the origin of the pork they are purchasing. As reported by the ABC earlier this month, two recent studies conducted by the APL showed that 70 per cent of consumers said they preferred ‘free-range’ pork products but thought that ‘bred free-range’ was the same thing.

The RSPCA defines ‘bred free-range’ as a term applied to pig products from pigs that were born in a free-range environment but subsequently raised indoors, sometimes in large open sheds with straw bedding known as eco-shelters, or conventionally in small pens on concrete floors. The RSPCA approved farming scheme requires producers who market their pork as ‘bred free-range’ to allow pigs to range freely outside. Piglets must be born outside and, once weaned, raised in eco-shelters.

I urge the Primary Industries Ministerial Council to work in partnership with peak bodies such as APL and animal welfare organisations to ensure better animal welfare and more transparency for consumers when it comes to accredited free-range and bred free-range pork.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I call the honourable member for Bonner, and in doing so I say how pleased I was to see his mother, Mrs Ella Vasta, when she visited Parliament House this week. I hope that she had an enjoyable visit.