Dancing On Ice
Watch Heather's Dancing on Ice Videos

Viva!

Pig in Hell

Secret filming inside more than 30 UK pig factory farms showed the distressing conditions in which modern pigs are kept – overcrowded concrete or metal cells awash with excreta and with bedding a rarity. The footage was shown around the world by CNN International. Tesco cringed with embarrassment as one of the farms was its principal supplier. More undercover work revealed the fate of breeding sows, most of whom are imprisoned in a metal crate little bigger than their own bodies for at least two-and-a-half months a year. We are demanding a ban on this cruelty. A slump in pig meats sales followed our campaign.
http://www.viva.org.uk/campaigns/pigs/index.htm

Sentenced because she’s a mother

The farrowing crate is one of the very worst of factory farming’s hidden horrors. Hundreds of thousands of pregnant sows are shut into these cages a week before they give birth - and remain imprisoned until their piglets are three to four weeks old. The crate is just inches wider and longer than the sow’s own body: for up to thirty-five days, every four or five months, she can do nothing but stand up, lie down, suckle her piglets and stare at a blank wall. Limbs aching from inactivity, skin rubbed raw by the bars and their maternal instincts utterly frustrated, mother pigs suffer from stress, pain and psychological torture in the crate. More than 70 per cent of all UK sows give birth in a crate.

Many piglets are born into their mother’s excrement. After that, they are confined to the tiny, barren “creep” area next to the cage - with nothing to do but suckle and fight over their mother’s milk. By three weeks old wild piglets are normally found up to 30 metres from the sow, exploring their environment and trying out new foods - no such stimulation for these intelligent, curious little animals in the crate. After a month of confinement and misery, the piglets are “weaned”, ie taken away to be fattened for slaughter. Weaning takes place months before it should naturally occur and the piglets, unused to solid food, suffer from scours - pitiful, wasting diarrhoea. They are then given a cocktail of drugs on a daily basis. Their mothers, meanwhile, are given just a few days before being reimpregnated, and starting the whole 16 week cycle again.

The farrowing crate is designed with one purpose only: to maximise the ‘production’ of pigs. All considerations of animal welfare are sacrificed to that goal. It is, therefore, not just an appalling practice in its own right, but a symbol of everything that is evil about factory farming. That is why this campaign is so important. Viva! is committed to the abolition of the farrowing crate not just for its own sake but as an integral part of the struggle to end factory farming and meat consumption itself.

Heather Mills Goes Undercover with Viva! to Expose Pig Cruelty. Viva! is campaigning for a complete ban on all pig farrowing crates - supported by Heather Mills. Footage taken from a covert investigation in 2007 at a pig breeding unit by Heather Mills formed the central plank of Viva!’s campaign. Click here to listen and download a broadcast quality WAV file of Heather talking about the farrowing crate.

In March 2007 Heather called on the government to end the use of farrowing crates in pig production by handing in a giant Mother’s Day card with the words No Happy Mother’s Day for Britain’s Pigs – Ban the Farrowing Crate to Tony Blair.

Later, outside Marks & Spencer’s Marble Arch store in Oxford Street, Heather handed to the store manager a second Mother’s Day card signed by shoppers. It carried the message - This is not just TORTURE – this is M&S TORTURE. On the reverse was a message asking M&S to end its use of the farrowing crate.

Heather also wore a portable TV screen showing footage of her recent covert visit to a farrowing unit with Viva! investigators and described to customers what she saw and her shocked reactions to it. Viva! supporters were in attendance wearing pig ears and noses, handing leaflets to shoppers and holding placards reading M&S: GET PIGS OUT OF CRATES

“I was truly disgusted by what I saw”, says Heather Mills. “Intelligent animals who wanted to nuzzle their young but couldn’t, who had only cold, hard metal on which to sleep and who faced the appalling stress of barely being able to move and never being able to turn around. Farrowing crates should be banned immediately - they are a brutal throwback to a different age and are nothing more than a legalised form of animal abuse.

“Of course sows suffer terrible stress in these cages as they try desperately to fulfil their natural nurturing role and the outcome can be mental collapse. To claim that Britain has the highest standards of animal welfare in the world, which the industry does, is nothing more than a joke. If M&S want its high welfare claims to be taken seriously then it has to start by refusing to sell meat from these cruel systems.”

Campaign victory!

When Heather and Juliet Gellatley of Viva! were interviewed on GMTV about this subject, M&S issued a statement promising to end their use of farrowing crates.