Julian's blog

Its amazing how narrow minded these organisations are, they dont seem to be happy with anyone trying to help and improve welfare standards, other than themselves. Who donates hard earned money to them anyway?

The ASA is an independent watchdog, so it wouldn’t have upheld the complaint by Compassion in World Farming if it weren’t based on real evidence. In fact, criteria for animal welfare standards are not met by mainstream farming- there is a lot of scientific research substantiating this claim, otherwise ASA wouldn’t have ruled the advert out. I think this is just a matter of honesty and BPEX claiming their pigs have very high welfare standards is just not true. British mother pigs have a better life than continental ones (sow stalls are banned in the UK), but they are still kept in farrowing crates. Pigs reared for meat are not castrated in the UK, but they still have to cope with the suffering of lack of straw and routine tail-docking, which is ILLEGAL for EU regulations and only needed in factory farming conditions: if pigs are provided with straw and access to outdoors they don’t become aggressive and there is no need for farmers to cut their tails without anesthetics. This is what ASA based its decision on. That the world is not necessarily populated with “anti”-something people.

As a matter of fact Compassion in World Farming was founded over 40 years ago by a dairy farmer, so why would they want farming to end? I think what organizations like Compassion in World Farming want is just a bit of respect for the animals that we rear for our subsistence. And a bit of respect for the consumers who don’t want to be hoodwinked into misleading claims of high welfare standards.