Hard News: Current affairs TV in "making difference" shock!
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Matthew, would enforced labelling of nature of production (whatever metric it may be - perhaps free-range "tick", and sqm per pig) cause trade issues though?
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I've lived in Canada for a cumulative total of about 5 years. Visited 8/10 Provinces. Driven through rural areas for days at a time.
Number of pigs seen = 0
Of course it's possible they're galavanting about in large, centrally heated barns making pigs of themselves.
Actually, I believe pigs are actually quite prone to catching disease and illness. For this reason, they are kept away from the roadside and the public in general. Just because you can't see them, does not mean they're in a barn somewhere.
Of course, just because you can't see them, doesn't mean they aren't in a barn somewhere. I gather Canada has a huge intensive pig-farming industry.
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Well, except for the tens of thousands of lambs that die terrible deaths from prolonged exposure in the godforsaken, treeless paddocks of the South Island every time it snows in August and September. Which it does pretty much every year.
Yes, but they'd die even if they weren't being farmed. Just in smaller numbers, and without the economic impact. Sheep die on the hills of the UK, too. And hypothermia is a much gentler death than in the jaws of a lion or wolf.
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Pigs are intelligent and have a sense of humour. I was drafting lambs off from ewes and sending the lambs off into one paddock and the ewes back into the paddock they came from. After a while I looked up to find quite a few of the lambs back with their mothers. So I followed the next lamb out of the race around the corner af the fence/hedge. There was the single free range farm pig ushering the lambs through a hole in the hedge and back to Mum. The pig was grinning I swear.
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Or Capybaras for that matter. Hate rodents
But Capybaras are fish aren't they?
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"There was the single free range farm pig ushering the lambs through a hole in the hedge and back to Mum."
Now THAT is clever.
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The pig was grinning I swear.
And humming (bleating) Jingle Bells?
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Slightly off topic but NZ Deer Leather is now in very high demand with the big European luxury fashion houses - apparently we have one of the highest numbers of farmed deer in the world
Many years back I was sewing it for the NZ market so we may have been the trend setter.
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After a while I looked up to find quite a few of the lambs back with their mothers. So I followed the next lamb out of the race around the corner af the fence/hedge. There was the single free range farm pig ushering the lambs through a hole in the hedge and back to Mum. The pig was grinning I swear.
What a lovely story, and on that note I'm off to Halletau for lunch to have some fish :)
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And it hurts having to pay $20 for a size 14 free-range corn-fed at the local supermarket.
$12 for a size 18 free range chicken here in Adelaide. On special. Not corn-fed, 'though. I normally expect to pay about $14 for a free range chicken big enough to feed my family.
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Of course, just because you can't see them, doesn't mean they aren't in a barn somewhere. I gather Canada has a huge intensive pig-farming industry.
Yes, that was the point. I was responding to an earlier comment that much of NZ's imported pig meat comes from Canada. And it sure as f7ck ain't free range.
Not to say we should necessarily idealize the life of the free range farm animal either, as was my point regarding South Island lambs.
If you left your dog outside to die in the cold you'd be prosecuted and rightly so.
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Free range chicken meat is hard to find, unless you live in Ponsonby.
It's improving, but I get the impression that the supermarket chains have no interest in making it happen.
The Westmere butcher is now stocking twin-packs of the Rangitikei Game Birds corn-fed free-range chooks for $16, which is pretty good. They've been frozen, and the company is owned by Tegel (so they'll have been filled up with antibiotics), and they're not nearly as good at the birds the butcher gets direct, but they're a big improvement on supermarket chicken.
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Hate rodents.
What even rabbit?
I'd say that most of my intake of piggy goodness comes from Italy, in the form of prosciutto, pancetta, salami and the like. I'd be naive to assume that Italian pigs are all lovingly hand-raised by Giovanni's Nonna, but does anyone know whether the Italian pork industry is relatively ethical?
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Quite. And it hurts having to pay $20 for a size 14 free-range corn-fed at the local supermarket. My partner and I pick one up every couple of months, but mostly chicken is off the menu.
Proof of what I said above about bloody supermarkets.
If you can't get to Westmere, the deli at Devonport has excellent free-range chickens, and the Mad Butcher often has the Rangitikei birds frozen for under $10.
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Bet the Mexican pig was grinning too when it gave us his flu germ.
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PS: A word too for Sue Kedgley. I think she's wrong on many things, but she has long been right on this one.
You could probably say the same thing about Stephen Franks :-)
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You could probably say the same thing about Stephen Franks :-)
Indeed! How extraordinary.
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Apropos eating rodents: kiore were delicacies here, as were dormice in parts of Europe. Black rats are definitely edible, but I dont know what they taste like, and dont know of any people who eat mice...capybara are delicious I am told (I have a friend who has eaten them many times), and there's talk of farming them, every so often (also of farming tree-chcikens - green iguanas.)
What bothers me about pig-farming is not just their living conditions, but also the normal circumstances of their deaths: they are an intelligent animal, and while it's unlikely they can know they're going to die, they can certainly understand screaming and mass fear.
Death at an abbattoir is very different from on-farm killing by an experienced butcher...
I think we should, as a nation, look very carefully at the way we transport and kill *all* our domestic food animals.
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Hate rodents.
What even rabbit?
Taxonomically, rabbits haven't been rodents for around a century . They're lagomorphs, an order of critters that are about as far removed from rodents on the evolutionary tree as we humans are.
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Was talk of farming kiwi in NZ a while back by one of Mr Franks' mates. Free-range, presumably...
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I think we should, as a nation, look very carefully at the way we transport and kill *all* our domestic food animals.
Agreed. Although I suppose we can console ourselves that we don't have the filthy American horrorshows described by Eric Schlosser in Fast Food Nation.
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What bothers me about pig-farming is not just their living conditions, but also the normal circumstances of their deaths: they are an intelligent animal, and while it's unlikely they can know they're going to die, they can certainly understand screaming and mass fear.
Mammals - and most birds - have much the same emotional natures as we do. Perhaps mercifully, they're limited in how far they're able to reflect on their circumstances, a tendency which is exploited in battery farming. If you treated humans that way a large proportion would surely die of despair. Pigs and chickens rarely ever lose hope.
Death at an abbattoir is very different from on-farm killing by an experienced butcher...
I think we should, as a nation, look very carefully at the way we transport and kill *all* our domestic food animals.The brutalisation of those who work in factory slaughter situations must surely have a huge social cost.
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Taxonomically, rabbits haven't been rodents for around a century . They're lagomorphs, an order of critters that are about as far removed from rodents on the evolutionary tree as we humans are.
Mmmm, lagomorpha...
Thank you for the taxonomic correction, though I'm disappointed that it removes an entire order from my culinary repertoire. I must make more effort to try guinea pig next time it's on offer, and I'm a little bit squirrel-curious too.
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I'm a little bit squirrel-curious too.
If you must. Might pay to avoid the brains though.
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Might pay to avoid the brains though.
I'll bear that in mind. Luckily, my brain consumption has thus far been purely ovine (crumbed, deep fried and served with celeriac remoulade).
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