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The Victorian Draft Pig Code 2006
The consultation (2006) on the Draft Pig Code in Victoria Australia represents the ongoing effort to eliminate the very worst abuses of animals that occur in the "animal industries".
They are attempts to create codes that will determine "minimum standards" in raising non-human animals as products, or to produce products, that are used by human animals.
QGAR [1], and other animal rights organisations feel this starts with an unethical premise, that non-human animals are there to be used destructively by human animals. But non-human animals are not "products". They are alive, and they feel, and they have their own reasons, personal and ecological, for being here. They are not property, or products. We don't "make" them. They are fellow sentient beings on this planet. Their ticket on this cosmic voyage has been paid for in the same way as ours has.
Human ethics are important to us as people and as a species. They give voice to the meaning we see in life. They try to concentrate wisdom into rules that guide our actions and interactions into paths in which we live more at harmony with one another and with the world outside. Ethical failures (unethical behaviour or bad ethics) results in a life of fear and insecurity, or meaningless pursuit of goals that are not satisfying to most people.
Human ethics is an evolving thing. It has led us to see that as social animals, if naked power has free rein we all live in fear. Even the strongest get old, or can be taken down by surprise or gang activity. It is better to have some hope that our ability to exist and act is not continually under threat. It is better when fear of others does not stop our ability to speak and interact with each other. This is the basis for ethics opposing personal violence, and the basis for laws against assault and murder.
But as humanity has evolved we have gone beyond ethics of individual violence, to understand that inter-family violence reduces our freedoms as families. Inter-tribal violence makes us less able to live well as tribes. Inter-nation violence makes us less able to live well as nations.
Ethics is partially an expanding understanding that we are part of a greater whole. Short-term personal gain might give us, as individuals, less in the longer term than working for a larger "common good" does. More importantly, even if we might individually make some gain by acting for personal gain, the mindset that puts us outside the circle of family, or community, or nation insidiously reduces our bonds to others. It makes us less of a family member, less a part of community, less a part of something larger. This sense of being part of a greater whole is what drives a lot of ethical action and social justice.
Being totally selfish cuts us off from our family. Seeing ourselves as part of a family gives us intangible benefits, a sense of union, of belonging, of care, of compassion, of love. Loss of the connection that empowers these feelings may innerly outweigh any material gains or short term benefits of selfishness.
It is because we can see that all families are part of community that inter-family conflict is countered. We lose something when we cut ourselves off from the understanding that all the families in a community are connected, that we, as individuals and families, are part of a "greater whole".
This sense of the "greater whole" is behind efforts to stop things like racism. To see some people as "other", so "other" that we have a right to use and abuse them, is essentially to deny and cut ourselves off from our common humanity. When we see ourselves as a "race" we become less "human". The same is true with sexism, agism, religious bigotry and so on. When we divide humanity into "us" and "them" and give ourselves license to use and abuse "them" then we become less human. People who fight for the "good of humanity", even if they go against the "good of their race" are fighting for inclusion in a greater union. White people who fight against abuse of other races by whites often do so because racism makes them feel less human. Destruction of their own sense of humanity is an sacrifice they are not willing to make.
A hundred and seventy years ago, people treated other people as slaves, as property. They refused to recognise them as similar, and talked about them as products, and talked about breeding them for various purposes. It is a mindset that is hard for many of us today to imagine. At that time, there were people who fought slavery, but there were also people who talked about whether it was better to allow slaves free interbreeding or to control breeding. There were people who debated how much of a flogging various infractions should attract. There were those who debated whether the cost of decent food or housing was balanced by the cost of replacing slaves who died of disease and malnutrition. There was little compassion and no sense of "inclusion in a large union" in those debates.
This is where consideration of animals is today. Animal rights campaigners often come from a larger sense of union, as part of "life" rather than part of "humanity". We see that understanding and acceptance of all sentient beings as part of something greater, of which we are only a part, makes us more alive, more joyously appreciative of the beauty and glory of life. Cutting off from other sentient beings makes us less, less alive, less vital, less compassionate. It simply means we feel less.
QGAR shares the sensibility of being a part of a larger existence. We see sentient beings as part of existence, an equal part to that occupied by human animals. We don't believe we have a right to use them as our objects, to alter their natural life patterns into something more convenient to our ability to slaughter them. We don't believe we allow our desire to "grow meat" to determine how they live and what they eat, how and with whom they breed, and so on.
In particular, we do not believe we should allow the desire to squeeze a little more economic profit for a few "owners" to mean that pigs suffer terribly throughout their life. Pigs, who naturally live in herds or sows and young, in dense forest undergrowth, are forced to live in conditions that are horrifically alien to their nature. They are put in incredibly over-crowded pens where they live with so many other piglets, and later weaners, living in their own filth, fed on a chemically concocted growth-promoting mix of food, hormones, chemicals and antibiotics, that they frequently savage one another. For most males, there is castration and on to slaughter. A few are kept in isolated pens for breeding.
Females sows, are often kept longer, in "stalls" so small that they cannot turn or lie down. This is so that they are "free" of the aggression that is so common in tiny pens where many pigs, whose maximum natural population density is about 25 pigs per km2, are forced to live. Sows get this dubious "protection" because they can be bred to produce new units of "product".
In essence, the Draft Pig Code legitimates this horror, through trying to put a limit on how horribly confined a sow can be. For example, here is a paragraph from the Minimum Limit section of the Code:
" 4.1.3 Pigs accommodated individually in stalls must be able to stand, get up and lie down without being impeded by the bars and fittings of the stall, lie with limbs extended, to stretch and to be able to freely undertake such movements."
What this means is that, while pigs are protected from being kept in conditions where they cannot even get up and lie down (conditions existing now), acceptance of the Code will make it legal to put pigs, whose normal behaviour includes travel over a range measured in square kilometers, to be confined for most of their life in cages where they can only just get up and lie down again. Note that while a pig would legally be allowed space enough to stretch, there is no provision for enough space for them to walk even a few steps. This will then become "recommended best practice".
If this was a prison camp for humans, it would be equivalent to stating cell size should be at least one meter by 2 meters and 2 meters high. This would be for prisoners confined for life. The only provision for exercise is that boars, the few male pigs kept for breeding, get some exercise twice a week. Other pigs are guaranteed no such comfort.
Other provisions include bars in cells (stalls) that don't actually injure pigs, and:
"4.1.13 Floors should be installed and maintained in a way that minimises the risk of injury and allows pigs to stand normally."
This is to prevent common practices for slat floors that see pigs breaking legs and unable to stand normally.
Another wonderful kindness is:
"4.1.15 The provision of straw to permit foraging behaviour and provide physical and thermal comfort when lying down is encouraged, provided that this is compatible with drainage and hygiene requirements."
In other words, the prisoners will be allowed a bit of straw on the cold concrete or slats, if it is doesn't interfere with hosing out the waste. Of course since pigs, animals that naturally dislike waste near them, are forces to urinate and defecate in their small living spaces, filthy straw to lie on might interfere with being hosed down.
Remember, this Code represents an improvement in the welfare of pigs as is generally practiced. Personally, I find it horrific that the Code feels it necessary to legally require enough water and food to be provided for the pigs. One would think that starving a pig would defeat the purpose of meat produciton. "Best practice" on water provision includes making sure the water isn't to hot to drink, (3.2.3) and that there are enough watering points that the pigs don't savage each other trying to get a drink (3.2.4).
The Code also recommends things like giving sedatives to pigs in "group pens" to reduce aggression (4.1.14). In other words, the answer to aggression brought about by tremendous overcrowding and fighting for access to water, food and a place to lie down away from urine and faeces is to drug the pigs so they'll put up with it.
The main method of dealing with the fact that pigs are essentially clean animals is to provide slat floors. This means that urine and faeces may fall through the slats. Unfortunately, it is also the type of flooring that makes it hard for pigs to stand normally, and if slats are too widely spaces, may mean pigs damage or break legs when they get caught between slats. It is also difficult to lie down on slats.
In group housing, the minimum space for adult pigs over 100-150 kg is 1-1.5m2. (Appendix III, Table 2) This is the alternative to the tiny individual cell. It is about big enough for a pig to turn around. That is not a lot of space if you are crowded with a number of other pigs who only have that much space. For growing pigs, a pig of 100kg is guaranteed 0.66m2 of space. (Appendix III, Table 1), about half that for adults. This means they are legally allowed to be effectively "packed in" to their group cells. It is little wonder there is aggression.
Overall, this Code may represent a legal limit against totally irresponsible abuse of pigs, but it can hardly claim to represent the "welfare" of pigs. It represents the "standard" of a prison camp designed to be a torture in itself. This is metaphorically equivalent to an improvement over a medieval dungeon, but only just. That this Code represents any sort of improvement over current practice in piggeries is a condemnation of the "pig industry".
The consultation on the Draft Pig Code is happening until the end of July 2006. The basis of the consultation will mainly be an argument about the need to end the most absolute abuses, fighting those who say they will lose money if such measures are put in law. The consultation is, however, an opportunity for ordinary people to state that they disagree altogether with the way pigs are treated, even if they are to eventually be killed for meat. People can write to:
National Pig Code Consultation c/- Bureau of Animal Welfare 475 Mickleham Road, Attwood, Victoria, 3049.
QGAR wishes to acknowledge that not all pig production is done in the worst possible manner. There are piggeries that voluntarily provide better conditions, sometimes much better conditions, then they are legally required to do. Most of those "good" piggeries are not the large commercial ones that produce most of the pork, ham and bacon Australians eat. The "big" piggeries generally represent meat production at it's most "intensive", in other words, where pigs have the most crowded conditions and suffer all the ills that go along with that.
Dhanu River, BSc (hon) MHSc Queensland Group for Animal Rights http://www.qgar.oceandrop.org
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[edit] Thanks For The Fish
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