Day 291 - 31 Oct 96 - Page 07
1 MS. STEEL: Just to whip through some of the evidence of
2 Mr. Long, obviously we would like all his evidence to be
3 taken into consideration, but I am just going to point to
4 some particular bits.
5
6 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I will reread Mr. Long, so all you need to
7 do is give me the topic, the point, and if you have a
8 reference, give me that. Do not bother to read from the
9 transcript.
10
11 MS. STEEL: Okay.
12
13 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is not as if you have to read it from the
14 transcript to bring it into the public eye, because the
15 evidence itself is in the public -----
16
17 MS. STEEL: My notes are so brief that I cannot always actually
18 tell what they are about unless I turn up the page. It was
19 about tail biting which was raised with Dr. Gregory, and
20 Mr. Long on day 113, page 56 basically said that pigs would
21 turn to tail biting if they were bored and that in his view
22 tail docking was completely unnecessary. He said
23 that: "Welfare concerns are that it is -- there are nerves
24 there and a strong view has been taken both over the
25 docking of pigs' tails and dogs' tails - which is a bit
26 irrelevant - that it is an unnecessary mutilation." He
27 said it should be, with good care, quite unnecessary to do
28 it. In terms of teeth clipping, he said that-----
29
30 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Do you have a reference for that?
31
32 MS. STEEL: Yes. Day 113, page 57. Actually, I do not know
33 whether that is --
34
35 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I will find it anyway.
36
37 MS. STEEL: There are two references I have got, which is page
38 55 line 15, page 57 line 3. They were both about the fact
39 that pigs were now bred to have far too many piglets and
40 that there were various consequences for that, which were,
41 you know, that the sow was not able to properly take care
42 of them all, and that was one of the practices which led to
43 teeth being clipped. Effectively, I think, because she has
44 got a dozen or so teats, and because she may produce a
45 dozen or so piglets at each farrowing, he said she is
46 effectively milked like anything. And obviously, if there
47 were not so many piglets, that would not be such a
48 problem. There are only so many piglets because companies
49 are trying to breed more and more with each environment/index.html">litter so they
50 can make more profits.
51
52 Dr. Long criticised the stocking density of 0.52 of a
53 square metre for each pig. He said that that is quite an
54 extraordinary constraint and frustration on the animal of
55 its natural tendencies. He went on to say that he would
56 say it was a very serious welfare constraint on the pigs.
57
58 He referred to the dry sow stalls and he was asked what was
59 his view on the effects of the sow's welfare. This was in
60 the farrowing crate, actually. He said: "I think that it
