Market pressures hit free range pork farmers

Stephen Foreman has been devotedly caring for pigs since childhood—but now the Taranaki free range pig farmer has wound down his herd in the face of market pressures.

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As the cost of production continues to soar and the New Zealand market is increasingly flooded with cheap imported pork, much of it raised using farming practices that are illegal in New Zealand, consumers and food service providers have become less willing to pay with a premium for free range pork. “Free range pork is more expensive for a number of reasons,” says Stephen, who farms 118 acres just south of New Plymouth with his wife Helen. The couple have reduced their pig herd from 60 sows to just 10 and are not replacing sows once they become too old for breeding. “You cannot raise as many piglets as the indoor commercial operations because free range sows tend to accidentally crush some of their piglets. Free range pigs also don’t grow as fast because the conditions are colder—indoor operations are temperature controlled. “Outdoor pigs are built differently too—the public wants lean meats but when you breed pigs to be lean you lose that buffer zone that keeps them warm outside. “The imported product puts a lid on what people are prepared to pay for pork.” Stephen grew up on a dairy farm and Helen’s parents farm deer. However, Stephen always liked pigs, so, as a child, his parents bought him some sows to look after and he did so well with them that they built a pig farm. “They are such bright clean animals, creatures of habit and I like their nature,” he says. “I have tried other things, we kept deer for a while and I’ve tried shearing but I just like pigs best. “When I left school 37 years ago, I went straight into working in the family pig farm and eventually bought a quarter share. Then 12 years ago we saw the opportunity to move to free range and bought this land. The demand was there then. We started out selling at farmers markets, then local butchers asked if they could stock our meat and we have been supplying Wilson Hellaby for a long time. “We wanted to look after our pigs really well and provide our customers with the best meat, so we have always bought the highest quality sows. We feed our pigs a good quality formulated diet but New Zealand does not have large arable areas, so pig feed ingredients are imported and costs have increased significantly. “The free range market is just getting tighter all the time. The people we supply are telling us that many restaurants are not buying free range pork because customers don’t want to pay free range prices.” Around 60 per cent of pork consumed in New Zealand comes from overseas, from dozens of countries. Much of it is raised using practices that have long been illegal in New Zealand, which already has some of the highest pig welfare standards in the world. This gulf is set to widen further still. The Draft Code of Welfare for Pigs, proposed by the National Animal Welfare Advisory committee (NAWAC) includes major changes, from banning farrowing crates to more than doubling the minimum amount of space provided to growing pigs. This will further drive up the costs of New Zealand produced pork, resulting in tens of thousands more piglets being crushed by their mothers each year, and make pig farming largely uneconomical in New Zealand. No other country has completely banned farrowing crates. New Zealand has fewer than a hundred pig farms and many would struggle to access funding to implement the changes in the code. “To me, the proposed Code is something that looks really glossy and nice on paper but can’t be put into practice without driving a lot of New Zealand pig farmers out of the industry,” says Stephen. “If you don’t have farrowing crates there will be a lot more crushed piglets. Pigs are naturally lazy animals, when they want to lie down they just drop to the floor. Sows can crush eight or nine piglets in a farrowing hut, particularly maiden sows with their first litters.

“Some sows are good mothers and some aren’t. I’ve had some sows I have had to move to indoor farms because they are squashing their piglets. That is the big difference between a farrowing hut and a farrowing crate—the crates were invented to save piglet lives. “Humans are told not to sleep with their babies but to put them in cribs. I see farrowing crates as similar to that. They are there to protect piglets while they are at risk of crushing. “The New Zealand pork industry is suggesting limiting the use of farrowing crates to a short period after the sow gives birth and I think that would be a good solution—but NAWAC wants a total ban. “The irony is, that if that happens and a lot of New Zealand pig farmers go out of business, there will be even more demand for imported pork, resulting in even more overseas pigs being raised to those lower welfare standards. The view being taken here seems to be ‘what you can’t see can’t hurt you’. “I’d like to see the government put the same requirements on producers of imported pork as they do on pig farmers here—because if overseas producers can’t meet even our