Telling porkies!

Hundreds of “Pork Not Porkies” posters plastered across the UK claim that pork stamped with a Red Tractor logo, is high welfare pork. Having considered the Red Tractor standards, Compassion feels the adverts to be untrue and misleading.

It is estimated that around 80% of British pigs are reared within the Red Tractor scheme (Rural Voice, 2011). Some of these will be reared in higher welfare outdoor, free range systems - systems and farms that Compassion supports.

However many will inevitably be:

Kept in crowded barren pens possibly without straw or other enrichment material
Unable to carry out key natural behaviours
Many will have their tails trimmed, or docked
The majority of sows will be confined in restrictive farrowing crates when giving birth and suckling their piglets.

Red Tractor pork cannot therefore be described as being “high welfare”

Joyce D’Silva, Director of Public Affairs says: “We are very surprised by this claim from the Assured Food Standards. Many consumers look to labels such as The Red Tractor and trust that they are buying products from animals that have been treated well and raised humanely. However, Red Tractor standards are so minimal that it cannot claim that all its pork products are high welfare. It is unfair to mislead consumers in this way.”

The full letter from Compassion in World Farming to the ASA can be viewed here.
To make a complaint visit www.asa.org.uk and fill in the easy to use complaint form.

The conditions outlined in Red Tractor’s standards do not represent “high welfare” but are in fact conditions of very considerable deprivation.