IN BRIEF

27 February 1998

IN BRIEF

&#8226 ANIMAL welfare campaigners are writing to all retailers to ask them what their pigmeat buying policy will be after the UK introduces its ban on sow stalls and tethers at the end of this year.

Imports account for 60% of the pigmeat sold in UK supermarkets. And Compassion in World Farming wants to know if the retailers will continue to source from abroad even though the EU ban on sow tethers does not take effect until 2006. There are no plans for a Europe-wide ban on sow stalls. "Obviously anyone with no clear policy could be importing from countries which are operating this cruel practice, and that is something we have recognised as not being acceptable here," a CIWF spokesman said.