Kiwiblog

Pretending to be from TVNZ, Jono from The Rock rang a pig farmer and started harassing him. The result? They’ve smashed their record for the most swearing in a call.

Listen to it here.

The HoS reports:

Mike King’s manager sought thousands of dollars from the Pork Board after the comedian was dropped from its television campaign – and after King had been alerted to pig-farming concerns.

Documents show King’s manager was corresponding with the Pork Board as late as March, just two months before the screening of last weekend’s Sunday documentary, in which King turned on his former employer and exposed what he called “callous” and “evil” pig-farming conditions.

People are going to be very suspcious of the timings and motivations.

Pork Board executives say the figure of around $50,000 was raised in a telephone conversation between Steele and its marketing manager Hadleigh Smith.

The request went to the board in February, and was rejected.

King said his manager’s request for recompense was “news to me” and asked who had told the Herald on Sunday about it.

That’s a very dedicated manager who seeks money on your behalf without telling you.

A reader sends this in:

Firstly though, I’d just like to point out the MASSIVE difference between dry sow stalls and farrowing crates.

The latter are used for only a 5-6 week period, generally a few days before giving birth, and around a month afterward. As you will read below, the primary purpose for these is to protect piglets prior to weaning. You can’t imagine the horror of finding a sow who has rolled on, and killed all of her newborns. These are incredibly large and heavy pigs, and quite honestly will squash anything smaller than a 10 week old pig like a pancake. I know because I’ve had to clean it up. Typically a sow will have around 1.5 pregnancies in a year, so on average will have around 9 weeks in a farrowing crate. It isn’t ideal, but better than the alternative.

Dry sow stalls are a totally different kettle of fish. These all sows are kept in all the time (hence the term, dry) I’ll take the opportunity now to tell you that neither of our farms have them – one is free range, the other is more intensive but contains a large, well ventilated dry sow shed, with plenty of straw and plenty of room. If you want to see an example, try googling “ecoshelter”. I won’t defend dry sow stalls, as it is difficult to do so. I don’t support their use. There are other options, even on a relatively intensive farming operation. However, the Pork Board are right to say you cannot just ban overnight. What you need is a period of phasing them out – ten years perhaps. That may seem like a long time, but the costs are incredibly high.

My main concern about groups like SAFE etc, is that they are unable to differentiate between farrowing crates, and dry sow stalls. I hope I have managed to explain the difference to you above (and below).

The other thing I would note is the TVNZ piece. Two points about Mike King’s “disgust”. Firstly – yes the pigs were screaming. Why? It was the middle of the night or early morning. The pigs had been left alone and were suddenly woken by human activity. What does this usually mean for them? Quite simply – feeding time. Free range pigs have EXACTLY the same reaction. If King and his companions ahd fed the pigs the screaming would have stopped. Guarantee it. Secondly – the chewing of bars and frothing of the mouth? Again, it is completely standard across all pigs. They chew things. Free range pigs it’ll be tree branches etc, for pigs in stalls or crates it’ll be bars. And yes, they froth. Christ, you should see them when they mate!

I find the last paragraph very interesting.

On a related note this video is referred to in this story at news.com.au about the cull of pigs in Egypt in response to swine flu.  I warn you the video is highly sickening and not for the faint hearted.

Before I get into the pros and cons, I first want to highlight this exchange from the Herald:

Agriculture Minister David Carter had earlier asked animal rights campaigners to give up the name and location of the farm shown on TVNZ’s Sunday programme.

The images showed pigs frothing at the mouth and unable to move inside their cages and aired on TVNZ’s Sunday programme.

Mr Carter said the farm would be inspected by authorities.

“The television images were disturbing. It is essential we find out if this intensive pig farming operation is in breach of the Animal Welfare Act,” Mr Carter said in a statement released this morning.

However, SAFE campaigner Hans Kriek said he would not be disclosing the information immediately.

When asked by nzherald.co.nz if that was due to publicity, Mr Kriek said yes.

“I’m not going to give you all the details of our strategy, which is a very sound one,” Mr Kriek said.

So after the documentary screened, the Minister immediately said he would investigate and wanted to send inspectors in to check if the pigs pictured were being treated in accordance with the Animal Welfare Act.

However SAFE refused to disclose the location of the farm. Yes SAFE, which claims to care for animals, refused to allow animal inspectors to find out where the farm is. And why? Because doing so would not fit in with their public relations strategy!

So SAFE puts PR ahead of animal welfare. Worth remembering.

On the issue of sow stalls, I don’t yet know enough. One expert last night said that if you don’t have them, it can be worse as the pigs fight and sometimes kill each other.

I don’t buy pork or bacon myself, but the sensible thing for those who don’t like sow crates is to buy free-range pork only.

The NZ Herald’ Rudman Column is titled:

Brian Rudman: Bulldoze and Nats blow byelection

This may be true but I would much rather the Government doesn’t pick up a seat off Labour (that it doesn’t need anyway) than spend $3 billion on a tunnel.

I also think the Government will pick up support nationally for not caving into pork barrel politics for the by-election and putting the national interest ahead of buying local votes.

Towns in America are flooding the Government with requests for projects to be included in the economic stimulus package being assembled by President-Elect Obama and Congress.

USA News reports on how the town of Edwardsville, Alabama has put forward proposals for $375 million of spending. Edwardsville has a population of 194m so that is around $2 million per resident.

Their proposed projects include:

• a renewable energy museum (cost: $32.1 million)
• scenic railroad (cost: $37.0 million)
• vineyards (cost: $9.0 million)
• replace streetlights with solar-powered lights (cost: $3,479,200),
• build solar-powered recharging stations for electric golf carts and vehicles (cost: $620,000)
• installing water pipelines beneath roads to soak up the sun’s rays, transferring heat (cost $50.4 million) that will halve the amont of energy required

So far the towns have a combined wishlist of $96.6 billion!