Re: “Pork producers explore ways to improve their public image” (April 1). Apparently producers want to improve their public image, which has resulted in advertising showing a farmer cuddling a piglet, or a family involved in the same activities as the rest of us, to engender that warm, fuzzy feeling towards producers.
There is also a complaint about funded scientific studies by special-interest groups with a specific goal in mind and to get a study that agrees with them, a strategy that I’m guessing producers are familiar with themselves, based on the statement that “The public relations side of it will help deliver the ‘right’ science.”
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This article deals with manure run-off into Lake Winnipeg; I want to address the elephant in the room that is giving producers their other black eye — animal welfare. The standard operating procedures of large-scale producers can include sow stalls, PACing or thumping of unsuitable piglets, improper handling by staff during the loading/unloading of these animals at collection points including sows crippled or injured from years in cages, castration of piglets without benefit of anesthetic or painkillers, and “boar bashing” — clipping the teeth and breaking the snout of the boar before shipping.
Over 10,000 Manitobans (urban and rural) have signed a petition asking for the discontinuance of the sow-stall system. If the purchasing public is aware of even one of the aforementioned practices, no advertising in the world is going to overcome the negative picture that is painted by reality. People aren’t stupid, and they don’t have to be intimately knowledgeable about the pork-producing sector, which is an irrelevant argument — they know when something is wrong.
The article concluded that people need to be informed about the economic benefits the hog industry brings to Manitoba which accounts for 10 per cent of manufacturing jobs. “Can you imagine where the province would be without the hog industry?”
I don’t have a problem with producers making a profit. Just stop treating the animals like they are only a product, show them the respect that is due to sentient living creatures and stop the cruelty for profit.
The current management of MPC is entrenched in maintaining the status quo; instead of trying to change public perception why not change the offending practices?
Leslie Yeoman, Co-founder,
The Humane Education Network (THEN),
Winnipeg
