nz pork!?

i suppose thats why i was so shocked about the whole thing. i make a special effort to only buy nz pork and bacon assuming it was farmed in a way i agree more with.

I agree cuppatea, when in the uk we tried to buy free range, and then it turned out free range didn't really mean free range and I just felt like it was getting really silly.

There was a Jamie Oliver programme a while ago that showed how hard it was even if you studied the label to make sure you were buying good meat, so many stickers etc misleading you on purpose.

Dammit, I missed this thread until now I have strong feelings (in some areas, anyway).

There were a couple of things that they showed on TV that were a bit disturbing. The pig with overgrown trotters, for example, or the other sow that was lying down and looked pretty crook. The crook sow is probably something you'd get on any farm at some time (we get sick... pigs do too) but those trotters should have been looked at for sure!

BUT the ridiculous over-dramatisation that TV one gave it made me so frustrated. T_Rex gave a great example, so I'll quote it...

T_Rex wrote: If I don't come quick enough to feed them, they start squealing awfully - you'd think I was torturing them. Sometimes they bite the bars on the gate. So you could say they chew bars, froth at the mouth (with so much saliva) and scream a tortured scream. And why? Because they want to be fed. [For the record they are on the plump side, and certainly aren't starving each day at feeding time, just greedy]. So all of those behaviours those pigs showed were just normal attention-seeking behaviour of pigs hoping to be fed. It was just media hype to personify that to indicate "tortured pigs."

That 'tortured screaming' they kept talking about? That's. Just. Normal. Pig. Noise. Full stop!!!! Mum and Dad have free-range pigs, and they make the same noises when they're hungry or you disturb them. Obviously none of the people working on that programme had ever heard a pig in distress!!!!

My cousins have a piggery (a very small one). For most of their lives, the pigs get to run round and wallow in mud to their hearts content. A few days before they're due to have piglets, they take them into the shed where it's warm and dry, and put them in a crate so they don't squash the poor little things when they have them. No, they can't trun round, but they seriously don't seem to mind. They lay flopped on their side feeding their wee piggies making the odd contended grunt, for most of the part. They'll hop up and make a racket at feeding time, or if you disturb them, but that's about it. And once the piglets are big, they go back out to the paddock (where they roll in mud and look disgustingly cared for, unless you realise that that's what they do by choice).

Anyway, my basic opinion is that TV One had some OK points... there were some things (like those overgrown trotters) that aren't good. I don't like the idea of pigs being treated like that. But they ruined the story with poor research and over-dramatisation. Seriously... now I don't know what to think of stories they run. If they can't take a couple of moments to research what a happy, healthy pig sounds like, how much truth is in any of their other news stories?