Pig Farm Responds to Animal Rights Allegations

UK - The farm at the centre of new allegations from an animal rights organisation following undercover filming has stressed that it puts the utmost importance on the care and welfare of its pigs.
calendar icon 31 July 2013
clock icon 3 minute read

In a statement to ThePigSite, Bedfordia Farms says its pig farms hold full membership of the English Red Tractor assurance scheme for pig production and consistently operate to these high standards.

The Farms are independently audited by an approved vet at least once a quarter.

Ian Smith, Managing Director of Bedfordia Farms, said: "At Bedfordia, we are proud of our pig-keeping standards and consider the care and welfare of our pigs to be of the utmost importance."

He said that the group, Animal Aid, has the aims to stop all livestock farming and promote an animal-free diet. Animal Aid gained unauthorised access to the pig farm where Bedfordia operates the highest standards of biosecurity for the protection of the herd.

This is the second time Animal Aid has scaled fences in order to gain unauthorised access to the livestock units thus breaching biosecurity and seriously risking the health of Bedfordia’s pig herd, Mr Smith added.

Mr Smith was responding to undercover investigators from Animal Aid that it alleges reveal suffering at Bedfordshire pig farms supplying Tesco and Sainsbury’s.

According to Animal Aid, the undercover filming at three farms reveals injured sows incarcerated in farrowing crates; a dying piglet frothing at the mouth; others gasping for air and coughing; dead pigs and piglets left on the ground; barren units; a colony of rats inside feed bin; routine tail-docking and an incinerator full of bodies waiting to be burned.

Animal Aid campaigner, Ben Martin, said: "The farming industry boasts of high welfare on British farms but our undercover evidence speaks for itself. Sows incarcerated inside farrowing crates, dying piglets, lists showing the numbers of sick and fallen animals and an incinerator full of the day’s victims: if this is the best of British, it’s not good enough."

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